Incineration
We write and we write,
but it must be changed.
Our teachers take a lit match
to our life,
scorching our hearts and souls.
We need better punctuation,
a stronger ending,
our words don’t flow as well as they’d like.
We bare our souls to have them burned down and left behind,
due to standards
and benchmarks.
Society, media, and peer groups
don’t trip us into those flames.
When we see a blossoming girl with anorexia
who prays to the porcelain god daily,
we say it’s the Top Model magazine she reads,
Or a growing boy changing to fit in with friends,
cutting himself,
his arms a tic-tac-toe board of scars,
we blame his Goth friends dressed in all black and chains.
It is not those chains igniting our essence
It is the schools building the pyres,
with their regulated schedules and bells,
Sending us into the blazing inferno,
not giving us any time to run back
to scoop up the ashes.