High School

Falling, failing, struggling, aching

Words not uncommon to a struggling high school student

"Yes, I'm trying mom!"

She doesn't see how much it hurts me.

"No, I'm not stupid dad!"

He doesn't know how much he crushes the spirit within me.

All I want to say is that they don't understand.

I come home with what feels like stacks of homework, as I struggle through my burial.

I am six feet underneath the homwork.

Six feet under all the demands.

Six feet under the insults.

Six feet under my insecurities.

I tell myself that they don't understand,

that school is harder now than it was back then.

Yet the heart within me and the aching brain above it sloppily disagree,

smearing my happiness into the ground

until it is nowhere to be found.

Yet all along, all I can think

is that I once could not wait to be a teen.