Class.
Science project,
I stand motionless in front of my class,
They're eyes are waiting,
Ears are perked,
Waiting.
I reach for note cards,
Arms shaking,
Like tree branches in a cold fall storm.
I search through the note cards,
Where's the first one?
I find it and my spirit lifts,
For a few seconds,
I almost even smile.
But then I remember,
I still have to present my project.
My smile fades away,
Like a sand castle in high tide,
It is gone in a fraction of a second,
I clear my throat and begin to read.

Like a drunk,
I stumble through the paragraph,
Filling it with stutters,
"Um"s,
"Uh"s,
And terrible pronunciations.
I don't dare look up,
My eyes are locked onto it,
As if invisible chains stretch out from the paper,
Keeping my pupils from moving a millimeter.

I continue onto the next card,
And I continue stumbling through the sentences,
Until I come to a particularly bad written word.
All I can make out are a couple ‘o’s,
And an ‘n’ at the end.
I try to keep my cheeks from heating up,
But they are furnaces,
That run on the heat of embarrassment.
My mind is moving so quickly,
I don’t even think to silently read back,
And figure out what the word could be,
I just skip it and try to keep the mask of a blank expression on my face,
To hide the fact that I’m dying on the inside.