Dear High School: The Chill
The Chill
A wooden desk
A wooden mind
A stone-cold soul
Suffused with lies
A throne upon which I die
I rule nothing but my own failure
My wooden mind is a masterpiece
Upon which others have etched their glory
Intricate carvings, a story unfolds in the grain
The design is not my own
I am chained with shackles of adult aspiration
Dead
Dying alive upon my seat of power
I work without living
Soon it will all be stone
I won’t be able to carve anything
My hand is already trembling
If any lines are my own they are shakily written, and crooked
My own story upon the crumbling monolith
Towering in its inconsequentiality
When I care to examine myself
I can’t help but find
A nondescript mind
Mine looks much like yours
When I see myself, I see you, I see us all
A meaningless soul
Droning on in an eternal lull
Dulled and overlaid by an ancient knife that has been cutting as long as time can recall
My humanity scratched out
Yours and everybody’s else’s too
I wonder if there will be any left
Or if there ever was any at all
A stubborn flame for which I yearn to wield or create myself
But my icy fingers clench and shake
They wouldn’t be able to hold it if I saw it anyway
I watch as my story unfolds without my consent-- or did I give it by not doing anything to stop it?
When I’m stone-cold it’s you who I will blame
A tempered flame
A frigid soul
Stone-cold