Inferior- meaning lesser or beneath another person in comparison to them
E.g. Through many eyes this is the position of the slave to their master

What is a word if not a friend?
An enemy?

What is a friend if they call you a word so used in an unfriendly way?
Are they also an enemy?

Who am I to judge them so?
Have I the right?

Who is it that put that thought so mentioned into my mind?
Was it not my hostile-seeming friend?

She called me inferior.
Said I was worth naught,
And forced upon me the duty she called slave.

I begged her not to do so.
Yet she would not lessen her orders now that she has taken reign.
Nor did she declare me friend, and so I stood.

She cried out to the whole world that I was disgusting.
Filth was her word.
I’d been a waste, she hissed,
She’d chosen wrong.

Her red-brown locks flew about in the wind,
As she banned me from her group

I’d never really been in it though,
I’d simply been there,
Catering to the needs of those around me.

Why scream at me to leave?
I thought.
I was leaving anyway.


But then she shouted words so indescribable,
So frightening to a child surrounded often by family who’d have covered her ears.

I can not say them,
But when her mouth closed and I turned myself around again to face her,
She looked at me and that wide mouth opened once more.

So she called me a fool to believe that people would ever befriend me,
Naïve, to think the world was perfectly fine,
And immature to play about as I did when others in the world could not.

Anger coursed through my tiny body
Filling me with charges that had enough power
To shock anyone who came near.
I know about the world,
I know that it’s not perfect,
And awful things happen all over every day.

But that’s not what did it,
She called me a stupid nobody,
And told me I’d always be that way.

And the tears poured,
Because the knife had been thrown,
It had penetrated the heart,
Searing right through the skin,
Through the bone,
And every muscle in and around my heart.

And it bled.
Because a hole was there inside of me,
My soul,
My home,
My heart.

Never before had words hurt to such a degree as these words,
For I’d known words as only my friend,
Always my friend.

And I looked at her,
And my voice came out a lot stronger than it felt,
Declaring that I was no fool,
That I knew the world wasn’t perfect right now,
And proclaiming that if anyone was beneath another person,
It was her.

And I didn’t walk away,
If fought her,
My excuse:
I had none.
I didn’t get in any trouble,
Because I was crying

She was in trouble for picking on someone smaller than her,
But size hadn’t mattered to me,
It was all about how fast you could run, how far you could soar,

That was the last year I stayed at that school,
Even though I wasn’t the only one bleeding at the end of the fight.
She was too.
One of the last things she said to me that year was this;
“It was just a name”

On that day she’d called me stupid,
She’d called me a nobody,
A fool who doesn’t see anything in the real world,
All of these words came after me,
And they had hurt more than any knife that ever cut me.

Just a name,
That was all.
Just a name she said.