Fear

A silent classroom.
Pencils tapping,
Pages turning,
People thinking.
Silence.
Golden silence.
“Spider!”
The girl yells.
Broken silence.
“Tarantula!”
She yells again.
Guys searching,
Girls screaming,
Teacher calming,
No one listening.
I’m thinking,
Wow, spider.
It’s afraid more of us,
Than us of it.
I smell -- fear,
And intrigue.
Terror,
And fascination.
I’m sitting,
Calm -- cool -- collected.
Not afraid,
Of a nearly harmless creature.
Not thinking of spiders,
But still thinking.
Thinking of people.
Of their fears.
But nothing of spiders.

The spider is scampering across the floor,
Avoiding feet,
Trying to avoid death,
Playing with fate.
It’s running,
Dodging,
Scared to death,
Of death.
And -- CRUNCH!
The end of life.
It’s family in despair,
More afraid of our kind,
Than ever.

The class calms,
Slowly.
Guys sighing at the fact it’s dead,
Girls heading back to their seats in relief,
Teacher resting from vigorous yelling and calming.
Me, still, in the same place I was,
Sitting in my desk,
Again, calm -- cool -- collected.
People are coming up to me,
Asking me why I wasn’t freaking out before.
All I say is,
“Because, I make friends not foes.
Animals are my friends.
I face my fears of them,
After they have developed.
Facing them,
Demolishing them,
To not be afraid.”

Everyone looks at me,
In amazement,
Like I’m a freak.
“Then what are you afraid of?”
The lookers ask.
“Nothing.”
I reply.
“When you accept all things imaginable,
It’s hard to be afraid,
Of things in the natural world,
And the unnatural.”
Lookers look at me,
With a she’s crazy look in their eyes.
I think to myself:
You may think I’m crazy,
But I think I’m special.
Think what you want of me.
Your opinion,
Is only one of millions.

Since then,
I have always been known,
In all my classes,
To everyone,
Familiar people,
And unfamiliar people,
As … the strange one.