tired birds

the class is filled to the brim with excited 13s and tired 14s, all the emotions in between swirling and shining and stuck in the awkward place they like to call: growing up. i sit quietly in the back, one clock tic away from letting my eyes drift shut, counting the rings of my fingers and separating the individual strands of forgettable brown hair. a soft hum of noise surrounds me, not asked for but not unwelcome either. the teacher answering questions about the project glances at her phone every so often, test results about her unborn child expected to appear any moment. the boy next to me looks worried. sometimes, i think about him, when everything gets to be too much. he understands, my mind says softly. my eyes pierce him now, his shaking palms when he thinks too hard resonate within me, a beating drum thumping in tandem with his own racing heart. the girl sitting at the front of the class is staring she sits down in her chair everyday looks at the blank slate wall and doesn’t move a muscle until it's time to leave. she comes to school for her dad, i think, not for her, but that’s alright. as long as she’s here. i know, across the hall, there is a boy. he can’t change things about himself, and he told me he has tried. there’s a child, who eats alone everyday, because no one is willing to eat with a freak. i go over to them, one day. a teacher with two kids and one of them is sick too sick to be normal he’s gone for a few weeks and comes back with the world weighing on his shoulders a little girl who tried to die sits in the back of a class i am her and she is me but sometimes we aren’t the same person the class that day isn’t bad, i think sometimes we are good, even. that doesn’t matter most times. the day the teacher locks the door and the boy next to me hyperventilates and the girl in the front lets a single tear drip down to her lips and the boy across the hall begins to pray and the child who eats alone is surrounded by their classmates and a teacher barricades the locked wood with unprecedented force and i sit and watch it all is the day the sun seems to set on the south that day was good. not perfect, not even great for most kids there, but it was good. my teacher’s phone dings loudly. its the test results. i like to remember it as the calm before the storm a small hint of ecstasy before the traces of olympus got robbed from us the lock doesn’t turn. it doesn’t need to. i made it out that day some people call me a survivor i just wish i knew why the boy next to me was so worried and why we were so tired