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