Tiles floors
As if an elaborate game of chess
Spiraled notebooks with lined paper
As if the bars on our collective prison cell
Mechanical pencils filled with lead
As if loaded weaponry to face war
Plastic chairs with metal screws
As if  the electric chair to melt our brains away
Teachers and their ungodly stare
As if guards keeping us complacent

They do it for the world, they say
They do it to prepare us for life, they say
They do it to help us grow and become smarter, they say
But that's not the whole truth, not in the slightest
They want to keep us in line
They want to keep us in place
They want to keep us silenced
They want to make us the perfect human
They want us to be perfect
We were supposed to be perfect
Perfect...

But we cant
We cant do what they want us to
We cant be their cookie cutter student
Never with straight As
Never with perfect manners
Never with perfect behavior
Never with their perfect emotions
Because we can't

But we can be our own person
With our own feelings
With our own emotions
With our own words
With our own personalized strengths and weaknesses
Because we can't be what they want
What humanity wants
But we can be human
We can be ourselves

And we will be
We will break and fall
And we will crumble to the sea of woes
But we shall rebuild our mighty kingdom
Out of tear drops and wooden blocks
And we will be human
We will be us

Whatever you say
I'm up to the task

I try but I know
I'll never be good enough

Realistic expectations,
Is that too much to ask?

Must be the best,
Nothing less
Than perfection

In everything I do,
I do it all for you
No room to fail with these 'expectations'

With every cut that's red,
With every bruise that's blue
I'll fall apart for you
For 'expectations'

With every tear I shed,
With every mask I bred,
There's nothing to be said,
I'm suffocating

The high bar has been set
There are goals to be reached
I can't stop until death
Either yours or one for me

Harsh night, broken heart and a walk.

You took my breath away. Hearts beat much louder without the distraction of lungs. Long and slow, and so rewarding, you showed me things from imagination. Your thrill made me dizzy, a dangerous game. You could be temporary or permanent, and it was never up to me.

solicitous,
the dark squeaks through,
sinks in the holes
in the lungs—the worms
found her too.

appendages of the hands
become mushrooms
grown from the soil of old hysterias
to sate the browning mind,
the eyes no longer do.

in the caricature of her boots,
the prints left in frenzied twos
are auxiliary to the compounds
of blues
that do not do

anymore than the supercilious
breath she left above ground
when she was twenty-two—
latent now in a grave
where the light can’t produce,

but the heart still beats.

Suffocating between houses so distant
Where oceans tempest in between
An opaque clutch on her throat consistent  
Tears wetting her façade, blatantly unseen  
The further the households grew apart
A greater despair pierced at her heart

Realisation non-emergent in her psyche
Convincing herself that just maybe
She can squeeze in amongst the houses
Within the distance vast yet she browses
To experience being cherished
On what it feels like to belong
Alas, that cannot be accomplished
Bonds hath severed for far long