What's in a name?
Let me tell you a story,
Of how my life changed,
And how my name changed,
Every time it appeared on the newspaper.

Replaced by a pseudonym,
Something to do with courage,
I was namelessly admired, slandered, and debated over,
Media’s Exclusive Coverage!

The newspaper headline read in big block letters:
“14 YEAR OLD GIRL SAVES SIX KINDERGARTNERS”,
That made me smile.
Just maybe I thought we had come that extra mile.
But no for I noticed,
My name was changed,
And the Printing Department was not at fault.
That’s just how my country dealt with ****** assault.
I never asked them to hide my name,
They had presumed, of course, that I was ashamed,
Of saving lives. It took me a minute to remember,
I had called Jyoti Nirbhaya for years.

I wanted them to know who I was,
Hiding I thought was for criminals,
Until I realized that I WAS one when,
On returning from the hospital I saw,
Pain in my mother’s,
Anger in my father’s,
And disgust in my relatives’ eyes.
No idea why a part of me had come expecting pride.

In school my “friends” guiltily refrained from talking to me,
Neither were my teachers too happy to see,
That I had returned to the same school,
Bringing with me my painful story,
Which I had mistaken as one of glory.

And when I went to receive the “Bravery Award”,
Only the trophy didn’t read compensation award.
They looked at me with too kind eyes calling me a “hero”
Their smiles told me they meant violated.

As I received the award,
I saw they were trying really hard,
To not let it show,
That they wanted me to know,
The difference between:
Bullet marks on the chest to bite marks on the breast,
Blue around the eyes to blue around the thighs,
Scratches on the fists to cuts on the wrists,
Loud screams in the cold to muffled screams against the cold,
The red of the torn ligament to the red of the torn *****,
The difference between a soldier’s and a victim’s blood.

And suddenly I felt as if I was,
The rescued,
Not the rescuer,
The maimed,
Not the fighter,
The oppressed,
Not the rebel,
The hostage,
Not the warrior,
I thought myself to be.

What’s in a name?
Apparently, a lot.

What would happen if everything just suddenly stopped.
Like the world literally did stop turning.
At the speed were going we'd all fling off in one swift defining motion.
all the CEOs
all the kindergartners
all the bus boys.
Flung off like a towel
In one passionate revealing motion.
Then I suppose the world would be naked again,
Like the day it was born.

But that's just morbid so I digress.

Sitting on the oddly sweet-smelling seat
anxiously ******* my oily bangs
song lyrics playing in and out of my mind.
Out the window I see soft brown grasses
and signs for auto shops
and leaves blowing around.
Around me is the hum of younger kids talking about ipods and soccer games
humming half-songs by overrated boy bands and forgotten summer camps.
Drawing is no use, even if you find a pencil it will surely break
wobbling off the page as cracks and portholes pass underfoot.
And I never have any books to read.
So I observe inside and out of the bus,
The only one to see a lonesome deer by the side of the road
or stolen looks by kindergartners.
As graffiti and weeds zoom by outside the smeared glass
we creak and grumble to a stop.
I dig around for the non-existent bus card
and get off my imagination vessel, the school bus.

Today I took a chance and sang a song of renaissance for nature
My nature
A secret passed among the trees as they hush one another in succession.
Like the toothy kindergartners battling in a shushing war before another activity.
I wonder why it took me so long to come back to this place, and why I even left in the first place.
I can remember, just months ago, crying and begging to myself to find peace within a now seemingly simple storm.
How I prayed to the god that I still question
When I pray, I pray to the temples of my mind.
Nature first because she's my passionate, angry sister.
She moves with the color of life and her breath tastes like rose hips and baby grass.
Once she entered a hula-hoop contest and twirled for years. Her tilting and swinging engendered a trance not even she could break.
We waited for her to abstain, but the crowd diminished with dissemblance, searching for entertainment elsewhere.
I stayed, loyally, as the others heard stories of miracles and wonders in long-away lands
Without stopping, I poured you in
I knew it was wrong of me all along
I knew you'd hurt me in the end
I'll always give too much
My heart feels little
I tell it to express, but it knows better than I, of when it should shut down and forget.
Where does the summer hold love?
In budding leaves that open so suddenly?
Beneath shadows of swinging backdoors of burger joints? Somewhere near rusty trash bins?
Maybe love swims in the air, waiting to be drunk and welcomed, relieving the truly thirsty.

I hate this place
Our colors may be purple, green, and gray but all I see is orange with a number on our backs
059 please step this way
056 please wait in line
0 what the **** is wrong with this ****
We come to school to learn and to better our futures
Not to discover what it is like to be in shackles and orange jump suits
Looking like professional garbage men with guns pointed at our heads 
The air is so stale here that I feel like I'm about to pass out with every breathe I take
Over here got me hyperventilating as I try to squeeze my small self through the small cracks in the hallway
Half the time I feel like a dart on a dart board the way they have me pinned against these lockers
Then I'm the rude one when I finally say *****,get the **** out the way
Cause if we are late it is another penalty going towards us
And I ain't got the time to be sitting in the hole over something I couldn't even control
Like what kind of game do they think this is
Treating us like kindergartners when we are **** near adults
Hell I'm 18 I beat the statistics
A black male and still not in jail
And before you say where are we now
This place isn't jail, this place is hell
Life may be harder outside these walls
But this place I swear is just ridiculous
They swear they are preparing us for college
But in actuality the only thing they are preparing us for is failure

I feel like crying
The kindergartners writing
Is the cutest thing