Excuse me? Yeah, I’m lost. Broken. A little confused.

“Write what you know,” you say; I’m sure it’d be easy for you.

Because we don’t have anything to say; we don’t have anything to do

Except scholarships and college apps—“these places are looking at you!”

You give us phones, laptops, watches, TV, books

But get pissed when fiction is where we wanna look

To get out of this life, this box, this place;

“You should know better by now,” has a rather bittersweet taste.

Ask questions, but not that one.

Show your work, but not if it’s wrong.

You’ll lose a point if you don’t do as I say—

You have to cite your sources, never Wikipedia, don’t forget the labels, decimals to the thousandths, turn around, touch the ground, jump through a hoop, and then, maybe, you’ll get a good grade.

But as I sit here for eighty-three minutes in this cold, rigid blue chair

Trying to come up with rhymes out of budget paper-thin air

I find that not a damn thing comes to my head

To write about, because all I’ve experienced is

The judgmental stares from teachers who don’t know

How hard we’re worked at softball practice, how long we have to go

The lines we perfect in marching band, out there marching in the snow

And the papers and assignments teaching us things we’ll never really know.

If you don’t catch the bus, you’re walking to school

But don’t you dare be late—that’s against the rules.

Because in here, in these four walls, everything is for a grade

And colleges will never ask if the price has been paid.

They care instead about, AP? extracurriculars? community service? were you in band? did you ever run for student council? do your parents give us money? will you?

Yes, I was in band, and I sold my soul to be the best,

Even though that never really happened despite my piano teacher’s best intentions.

And you’re right, the fifty-two thousand in tuition you’re milking out of my back pocket

Isn’t nearly enough to provide you with a new cafeteria. My bad.

“You’ve had a 4.2 since your first advanced class,

But full tuition? In your dreams, kid. Kiss our sorry— um…”

Where was I.

We might as well be zombies with all this sleep we’re getting;

Isn’t it ironic that AP Psych teaches about sleep deprivation?

In high school, we are the Walking Dead; in college, the Walking Debt;

Student loans follow us everywhere we go, lest you forget.

So enlighten me. Enlighten us. What do we do?

Where is the fun you wanted us to have, or was that a lie too?

Maybe we have it easier than other kids, sure, but are we the ones at fault?

We’ve lost from the very beginning, and we’re all subject to the assault.

Keep up, you say, don’t let your feet drag behind

When we’ve been wearing the wrong size shoes the entire freaking time.

We’re expected to know everything, even what we don’t hear,

Which is maybe why I wanted to end my life last year.

And my passion is school because I don’t have time for anything else,

Despite you telling me that high school was where I’d “find myself.”

My parents are PhDs, but they never told me at what cost.

And now, all my best efforts have earned me is, “Hey, maybe one day you’ll be my boss!”

“Write what you know,” you say, as you sit there all calm;

Hmmm. Maybe I’ll write about school, because that list isn’t very long.