MY HISTORY

my history
can be told through
weary scribbles on napkins, fluttering on the
table to be thrown out, the little annoyances
necessary evils to provide a
second-hand education to me
as a three-year-old, an accidental metaphor
of learning disposed
in trashcans or hand-me-down towns
littered with battered books, two words on each
page.
my history lies
in the flesh ripped from my knees and
absorbed by the pavement in the playground
and in the limp fraying band-aids
covering my pain, but it all went away
dissolved except for a white ghost clinging to
the surface, fading, the shirt washed
too many times with the wrong colors.
pressing my face to the glass of the
eternal washing machine, I see
the system flood, and
yank around the victims in a vicious circle,
every damp sock thwacked against the wall and
pulled back to repeat the cycle once again.
don’t worry, it draws in everyone, there is
No Child Left Behind.
my history now
wobbles on the edge, afraid to take the dive of suicide,
to leave behind my frozen photograph in front of me,
because my history lies
here where I was told every truth to tell,
and out there
my history
dies.