Purple Markers

Good Morning!

Put on your happy face

It’s freshman year

The first time in a brand new place

Open doors and closed windows

High school feels like an embrace

From a relative you’ve never met

Welcome to the rat race

Yeah...

I’ve got first period algebra

With upperclassmen

They’re cool, we’re cool

They’re upper-class, man...

Take a deep breath

Keep your head held high

Study loudly and proudly

And learn how to get by

As a freshman

And as a person

But then

All of a sudden

Good Morning!

This time with a capital M

Because now I’m a sophomore

And I know my way around the mayhem

I can swim upstream

Dodging students in the halls

The way that I maneuver a car right now

Carefully, and afraid of the walls

Now I can start learning science

Chemistry is my new best friend

I feel elemental, however periodically

Because science will never end

I saw a portrait of an apple in the hall

It was a still life

It didn’t move or jump or anything

Because it’s okay to get tired and to rest

A still life

That’s still life

Sophomore year is ending

It’s going to be over soon

The impact of the halfway point closes in

Like craters on the moon

But then

Good morning!

Now I look in the mirror

Junior year starts with bags under my eyes

But I feel like I can see myself clearer

I’ve found my place in music

A family in my band

Notes make me feel ten feet tall

And I’m ecstatic, guitar in hand

And I still go to class

Only six periods in a day

I start in AP Chem

And end it in a haze

AP Lang will do that to you

Junior year I think I changed

I hope I am different now

I ask a lot more questions

A substantial amount about how

How do I fit all of this stuff in my head

Because between vocab words

How I feel about myself

Electrochemistry

And an endless stream of quarter notes

I can’t keep track of it all

I feel like I’m only taking

A quarter of the notes

That I should be

I want to remember all of this

And now

It’s Senior Ye---

Oh wait, no...

Good morning!

I’m sorry, I broke form

It’s Senior year

And becoming unique has become the norm

Walking through the school now

In the past year alone

I feel taller and happier

And I know that we’ve grown

Closer to who we each need to be

I mean, we’re not there yet

We’re older and smarter

But not as old or as smart as we’ll get

Now, I know that I’ll always have music

And I’ll always have science

I’ll always have friends and a family

My own high-school alliance

Senior year has been about

The kinematics of moving out

The poetic importance of purple markers

And the history of shrinking doubts

About how I feel about all of this

On a purely individual scale

Senior year makes me feel subatomic,

Powerful, and far from frail

That’s all owed to the gauntlet

That is Mount Si

To the lunches where bunches

Of students sit, munching on

Whatever they can, and where

Scrunched eyes and pulled punches

Make me laugh until I can’t breathe

To the night rehearsals

That take only two hours

And all of your energy for the week

I’ll have you all know

Despite being Monday through Friday

Band is not for the weak

And next year

I’ll say good morning

It will be freshmen year again

Not going to lie

I’m too nervous to make this part rhyme

But this high school has shown me

Through laughter and tears

And blood and sweat

And four incredibly short years

That the most powerful thing

I can be is myself

And all I have control over is

My mind, my attitude and my health

To the people

Doing the teaching

Putting up posters

Checking to see that the students are okay

Thank you

Thank you from my binder

From the string marks on my fingertips

From the pencil-graphite-dust-stains on the side of my right hand

You know? The ones from handwriting two pages in a criminally short amount of time

Thank you from the worn-out shoes

From the half-painted parking spots

From the handshakes, hugs and high-fives

That float through the air like positive-attitude-pollen

High School

You mean the world to us

Now we need to see what we mean to the world.