One day during English class, you began to screw open our heads and remove our brains.

 

At first, we didn’t notice.  You whispered to us, but we never listened.

Eyes were tired from late nights, and laps around the track.

We sat in desks and thought about learning.  

They gave us tasks.  We drowned.  We screamed.

We wished for Friday, and woke up at 2am.

 

Mechanical pencils scratched and scratched on rumpled paper. The paper was turned in.

They gave us a letter.  Be careful, they said.  This letter defines who you are and how smart your brain is.

Be careful.

We nodded.

Our insides burned.  Our throats scraped raw.  

We sobbed quietly behind closed doors so that our mothers wouldn’t hear.

We  kept our letter, because it defined who we were, and how smart our brain was.  

We wished for Friday, and woke up at 2am.

 

Again, you whispered something in my ear.  

This time, I stopped and listened.

 

That night I went home.

I did not take out my rumpled piece of paper.

Instead, I painted an octopus in my closet.

Clothes were removed from hangers and cast on the beige carpet.  Prom dresses were shoved under beds, and running spikes were stuffed into bags.  

The Hamilton soundtrack played over speakers.

It was 3 in the morning.  

My limbs were tired.  My brain was loosened.

Screws that you had begun to unfasten fell onto the floor,

next the the bucket of orange paint.

Eight arms were painted,

winding around the walls, overlapping, curling around the door handle.

Electricity flickered in my brain, and paint splashed on my heart,

staining it a sunset orange.

 

The next day, feet were laced into shoes,

and I ran.  Not around the track, but up a mountain.

Dead grass was flattened, and sharp air was inhaled.

It hurt.  My breath came out as a strangled wheeze.

Shaking. Trembling.

My limbs were tired and protesting,  

my soul was in love.

My soul was in love with my town spread out below me like a wrinkled map.

My soul was in love with the beauty of the sharp air,  

and with the beauty of my pumping heart,

stained with orange paint.

 

The paper.  It said: Be careful.  Your letter defines who you are, and how smart your brain is.  

You whispered in my ear that the paper was a lie.  You whispered that I was worth so much more.  

My brain was on fire.

 

How, I asked you.  How did you know I needed to hear this?  Why did you make me fall in love with the world?  

You laughed.

“Why?

Because I love you.”