Something (based off of a Stephen Chbosky poem)

On a piece of scratchpaper She scribbled down words And they were such a mess And her teacher told her She was holding her pencil wrong And she smiled often Her hair was always a bouncy mess And her dad played video games with her And her mom took her to school every morning And that’s how everyone felt On a piece of lined paper She wrote with curiosity With many words She didn’t understand The full extent of their meaning The teacher drew smiley faces onto her papers In bright red ink And she only smiled when she meant it Her hair was held in a ponytail Back from her face So she wouldn’t have to pull it back when she was writing And her dad held her hand less often And her mom quizzed her on vocabulary On the way to school And that’s how she felt it would always be On a computer She saved a secret file Because it was dark That made the room dark And her teacher read the essay silently And called her mother And her mother brought her to a therapist And she smiled all the time But never really meant it And her hair was bright red Untended to and her dad locked himself into his room and her mom cried on the way to school and told her it was only a yawn and she felt nothing That’s why on a typewriter She banged on the keys And with bloody fingers Stamped her last poem Her teachers saw her arms But believed the excuses she made And she couldn’t bring herself to smile Her hair a dark black whirlwind Strewn in front of her face Her mom and dad wouldn’t be home Until midnight So she took it upon herself To tell the world In one swift movement What it felt like To be her