Of Scars And Marks

Look at us,

sitting in straight rows organized and lined up.

Our seats completely identical, the same tan color.

Only our faces are different.

Eight times a day we go to the same places we inhabited the day before.

The teacher checks her pale composition notebook each day to ensure that you have not deviated from your assigned location.

And to think, this place is supposed to teach us to be "well rounded individuals." 

Sure, we'll be well rounded,

every corner will have been smoothed over,

so that our rough edges will not catch, snag or irritate the Walls (or the teachers) as we are processed through this building.

Heaven forbid we make a mark on the institution as we pass.

"Say "thank-you" to all the teachers, even the ones you hate and say only happy things to the parents when you graduate, then smile and flutter away.

Fit in with society the way we made you to fit, don't make waves, don't change things,

or we will have failed in our attempt of programming you as we taught."

But we will not come out as individuals,

our rough edges and corners made us different,

and so in smoothing them over they rub out and cover up our identities.

All that lost so that the System can process us through without wearing out.

Yet some of us are hard, like diamonds,

we cannot be smoothed and the Walls bleed with change where we have been pushed through.

The wound will heal but there will still be the scar,

we will have made our mark in passing.