When I was eleven I came home with a piece of paper back then I knew how much those five letters would determine how much you were worth and as a kid, I felt pretty worthless there was a time I remember before the paper where all I would do was draw
Mountains fascinated me and that’s what I drew all the time, mountains I drew them with snow caps- Without snow caps I drew trees at the foot of them Plaster a setting sun in the distance Made them look like teeth And a road came from them Leading nowhere but to you
I was eleven When I tasted the value Of myself Slapped across my cheek Like a tattoo And the first word To be printed on me For everyone to see; Failure
And they all knew that Was true I could never turn my mountains Into Everests My trees into the Amazon Basin Or my lakes into the Atlantic And I ran through the world; A blank piece of paper, All of a sudden everybody had A reason to use a sharpie
I’ll never be able To make my mountains Into Himalayas
And I can never stop them from Using their Sharpies, After a while your skin color Doesn’t matter anymore What they see on you is a story And they can tell me what they think But they’ve never seen my back The things that I’ve carved on to the surface of my spine She feels them sometimes when we have *** trying to figure out where the period ends.