The Bell Does Not Dismiss You
At my graduation party,
I was asked about my high school experience.
I started high school weighing 189 pounds. 6’1 and hopeful.
I was added to the list of 1200 kids crammed into classrooms,
students hit the textbooks and teachers hit the grade books.
Freshman Year
I was normal.
8 hours a day I’d walk the halls as if I was a tired soldier coming back from war,
we all stepped in unison because if you marched out of sequence you were different
and to be different in high school meant you either had died or you used to be homeschooled.
Freshman Year
I tripped on my Converse in biology and instead of getting up to tie my shoes
I wanted everybody to dissect me on the ground,
so I could make the laughter go away.
Freshman Year
My friend Shasquhanna was beaten at lunch for wearing a hijab.
Freshman Year
I realized those kids who beat my friend at lunch couldn’t afford a hijab.
Yes, they only cost 2.95 but those kids used their milk money for vapes, weed, and answers on the math test.
Freshman Year
We can use calculators in her class,
why the hell are you cheating on the math test.
My high school experience wasn’t really an experience,
but an experiment.
I was a rat in a school full of dead ends,
my teachers and peers watch me as I hit roadblock after roadblock.
These blocks being side plots to the story of me,
including the following social media influencers
Overeating
Depression
Homophobia
Insomnia
Racism
And Mental Illness
Sophomore Year
I had to drop my seventh hour to make room for therapy
Sophomore Year
I hate men
My therapist name was Sam
Sophomore Year
Sam has to have a conference with my parents
Sophomore year
I grew hate Sam
Having Therapy at school reminds me of going to the bathroom in a toilet factory.
All of our discussions were better off clogged in a drain.
Junior Year
I came out
Dear God, I forgot the combination of the closet.
I want to go back in.
Junior Year
My mother gave me a grocery list of ways to “fix myself”
The list includes the following
Lose weight
Get your depression in check
Work more hours
Do your homework
Lose weight
Lose weight
Lose weight
Take a woman to prom
Get your shit together.
Junior Year
I came to the conclusion I can’t run on a treadmill while doing my math homework listening to an inspirational podcast with straight porn pulled up on my school computer.
Junior Year
I asked my mom to buy me a calendar so there's no way in hell she’ll forget which days she needs to be homophobic,
or which days I need to lose weight,
I’d put it in my calendars,
but I got a virus after all of the weight-loss ads in my emails,
so I had to delete some apps like my parents deleted me from scrapbooks, and Facebook timelines, and family reunions.
They might as well have told people they only had two children.
My parents have 3 children.
Junior Year
I started auditioning for musicals because I’d rather portray other people's problems than my own
I realized that crying on a stage
And being scrapbooked on a yearbook page
Was better than home, at home, I felt trapped in a cage
The wires were made of emotional trauma and celery sticks my mom tried to force down my throat.
I was paid by my mother to be a vegetarian,
so I could be so thin I could fit back in the closet.
My mother told me she lost the key to that pen I was kept in.
So I looked in that toilet where I hid all my problems.
Apparently, when your toilet is clogged, you need a plumber.
So I called God.
Busy making men who would grow up to laugh at me.
So I called my therapist,
but she was too busy because I didn’t work my problems into her session.
So I called my best friend,
but she was still mad because I couldn’t give her a ride to school on Monday.
So I called my grandparents but apparently,
I hadn’t been baptized soon enough.
So I called anybody that would pick up the phone
and the only voice I ever heard respond was Voicemail.
A sound that will haunt me until the day I die.
Because Voicemails have to answer the phone every time.
Other people never have to pick up the phone at all.
That was obvious.
Senior Year
I joined a Facebook group where they did fake castings for different shows and I always landed that fat guy,
and when I’d ask what they saw in me in them they always didn’t have it in them to tell me that it was because, we, weighed, the same.
Senior Year
I had a hard time connecting to gym class because in gym class the ‘straight” boys would make jokes about doing gay things when the teacher wasn’t looking,
but then when I come into class and don’t say a word I’m still called a faggot?
HOW the HELL do you do gay shit then make fun of gay shit?
Listen up boys if you have a crush on Coach German,
get homosexuality might be a foreign language to you,
but it doesn’t make sense to laugh at the Mexican waiter speaking Spanish on the phone?
But ya seem to do it anyway?
It doesn’t make sense to make fun of a teacher for their wage when they have no control over what their salaries are, but ya seem to do it anyway?
It doesn’t make sense for a high school in California full of white kids,
to drag around a black doll by her braids and call her “Shaniqua” and the N-word” for no goddamn reason, but ya still do it anyways.
American used to be the land of the free, but 194 other countries see us as the Land of the
Racists
Land of the Homophobes
Land of the Pricks
And Privileged
Dear High school quarterback,
go support your high school’s theatre,
I promise you won’t look any gayer than when you’re out on the field tackling men.
Dear Parents
I get it’s your house your rules, but you seem to forget that it’s your religion.
Senior Year
I was diagnosed with Bulimia, but to my parents I was the boy who cried wolf because I didn’t have my fingers down my throat 24/7.
Senior year I realized that if I wasn’t with my parents,
I wouldn’t cry 24/7
Senior Year I stopped purchasing mears from Amazon
because they all ended up broken glass shattered on my floor,
my hands bloody with rage, 24/7
Because after a while you realize that when you can’t fit in the mirror
you’ve got a problem.
When you can’t get out of bed in the mornings
because your brain won’t decide between pop tarts or fruity pebbles
so you end up eating both but then your back in this cycle of puking 24/7
THE BELL DOES NOT DISMISS YOU BUT SUICIDE DOES
Senior Year
I didn’t make the school play.
Don’t worry,
you'll get your chance in the spotlight.
Your casket will center stage, with flowers surrounding your bloated body, the makeup on your face smeared because even in your afterlife you still sweat way too much, your suit is wrinkled because even in hell it costs way too much at the laundromat.
I leave high school weighing 328 pounds.
6’5 and Broken.
They say that high school’s best and worst four years of your life.
I bet that boy will text me back when the good years start showing up,
I bet my dad will start talking to me again when the good memories start pouring in,
and I bet I’ll find a boy who likes me for me and not me “if I lost weight” when the good days start sliding into my dms.
High school is a melting pot
of abuse, torture, and torment,
and if you walk across that stage, consider yourself ready for the real world.
FRESHMAN YEAR
I walk into college feeling
Anxious
And nervous
And scared
And defeated
These next four years
Better make me feel
Completed
Undefeated
I should be treated with respect no matter if I weigh 800 pounds or 1.
High school's over.
Time for the real world.
Have fun.
I was asked about my high school experience.
I started high school weighing 189 pounds. 6’1 and hopeful.
I was added to the list of 1200 kids crammed into classrooms,
students hit the textbooks and teachers hit the grade books.
Freshman Year
I was normal.
8 hours a day I’d walk the halls as if I was a tired soldier coming back from war,
we all stepped in unison because if you marched out of sequence you were different
and to be different in high school meant you either had died or you used to be homeschooled.
Freshman Year
I tripped on my Converse in biology and instead of getting up to tie my shoes
I wanted everybody to dissect me on the ground,
so I could make the laughter go away.
Freshman Year
My friend Shasquhanna was beaten at lunch for wearing a hijab.
Freshman Year
I realized those kids who beat my friend at lunch couldn’t afford a hijab.
Yes, they only cost 2.95 but those kids used their milk money for vapes, weed, and answers on the math test.
Freshman Year
We can use calculators in her class,
why the hell are you cheating on the math test.
My high school experience wasn’t really an experience,
but an experiment.
I was a rat in a school full of dead ends,
my teachers and peers watch me as I hit roadblock after roadblock.
These blocks being side plots to the story of me,
including the following social media influencers
Overeating
Depression
Homophobia
Insomnia
Racism
And Mental Illness
Sophomore Year
I had to drop my seventh hour to make room for therapy
Sophomore Year
I hate men
My therapist name was Sam
Sophomore Year
Sam has to have a conference with my parents
Sophomore year
I grew hate Sam
Having Therapy at school reminds me of going to the bathroom in a toilet factory.
All of our discussions were better off clogged in a drain.
Junior Year
I came out
Dear God, I forgot the combination of the closet.
I want to go back in.
Junior Year
My mother gave me a grocery list of ways to “fix myself”
The list includes the following
Lose weight
Get your depression in check
Work more hours
Do your homework
Lose weight
Lose weight
Lose weight
Take a woman to prom
Get your shit together.
Junior Year
I came to the conclusion I can’t run on a treadmill while doing my math homework listening to an inspirational podcast with straight porn pulled up on my school computer.
Junior Year
I asked my mom to buy me a calendar so there's no way in hell she’ll forget which days she needs to be homophobic,
or which days I need to lose weight,
I’d put it in my calendars,
but I got a virus after all of the weight-loss ads in my emails,
so I had to delete some apps like my parents deleted me from scrapbooks, and Facebook timelines, and family reunions.
They might as well have told people they only had two children.
My parents have 3 children.
Junior Year
I started auditioning for musicals because I’d rather portray other people's problems than my own
I realized that crying on a stage
And being scrapbooked on a yearbook page
Was better than home, at home, I felt trapped in a cage
The wires were made of emotional trauma and celery sticks my mom tried to force down my throat.
I was paid by my mother to be a vegetarian,
so I could be so thin I could fit back in the closet.
My mother told me she lost the key to that pen I was kept in.
So I looked in that toilet where I hid all my problems.
Apparently, when your toilet is clogged, you need a plumber.
So I called God.
Busy making men who would grow up to laugh at me.
So I called my therapist,
but she was too busy because I didn’t work my problems into her session.
So I called my best friend,
but she was still mad because I couldn’t give her a ride to school on Monday.
So I called my grandparents but apparently,
I hadn’t been baptized soon enough.
So I called anybody that would pick up the phone
and the only voice I ever heard respond was Voicemail.
A sound that will haunt me until the day I die.
Because Voicemails have to answer the phone every time.
Other people never have to pick up the phone at all.
That was obvious.
Senior Year
I joined a Facebook group where they did fake castings for different shows and I always landed that fat guy,
and when I’d ask what they saw in me in them they always didn’t have it in them to tell me that it was because, we, weighed, the same.
Senior Year
I had a hard time connecting to gym class because in gym class the ‘straight” boys would make jokes about doing gay things when the teacher wasn’t looking,
but then when I come into class and don’t say a word I’m still called a faggot?
HOW the HELL do you do gay shit then make fun of gay shit?
Listen up boys if you have a crush on Coach German,
get homosexuality might be a foreign language to you,
but it doesn’t make sense to laugh at the Mexican waiter speaking Spanish on the phone?
But ya seem to do it anyway?
It doesn’t make sense to make fun of a teacher for their wage when they have no control over what their salaries are, but ya seem to do it anyway?
It doesn’t make sense for a high school in California full of white kids,
to drag around a black doll by her braids and call her “Shaniqua” and the N-word” for no goddamn reason, but ya still do it anyways.
American used to be the land of the free, but 194 other countries see us as the Land of the
Racists
Land of the Homophobes
Land of the Pricks
And Privileged
Dear High school quarterback,
go support your high school’s theatre,
I promise you won’t look any gayer than when you’re out on the field tackling men.
Dear Parents
I get it’s your house your rules, but you seem to forget that it’s your religion.
Senior Year
I was diagnosed with Bulimia, but to my parents I was the boy who cried wolf because I didn’t have my fingers down my throat 24/7.
Senior year I realized that if I wasn’t with my parents,
I wouldn’t cry 24/7
Senior Year I stopped purchasing mears from Amazon
because they all ended up broken glass shattered on my floor,
my hands bloody with rage, 24/7
Because after a while you realize that when you can’t fit in the mirror
you’ve got a problem.
When you can’t get out of bed in the mornings
because your brain won’t decide between pop tarts or fruity pebbles
so you end up eating both but then your back in this cycle of puking 24/7
THE BELL DOES NOT DISMISS YOU BUT SUICIDE DOES
Senior Year
I didn’t make the school play.
Don’t worry,
you'll get your chance in the spotlight.
Your casket will center stage, with flowers surrounding your bloated body, the makeup on your face smeared because even in your afterlife you still sweat way too much, your suit is wrinkled because even in hell it costs way too much at the laundromat.
I leave high school weighing 328 pounds.
6’5 and Broken.
They say that high school’s best and worst four years of your life.
I bet that boy will text me back when the good years start showing up,
I bet my dad will start talking to me again when the good memories start pouring in,
and I bet I’ll find a boy who likes me for me and not me “if I lost weight” when the good days start sliding into my dms.
High school is a melting pot
of abuse, torture, and torment,
and if you walk across that stage, consider yourself ready for the real world.
FRESHMAN YEAR
I walk into college feeling
Anxious
And nervous
And scared
And defeated
These next four years
Better make me feel
Completed
Undefeated
I should be treated with respect no matter if I weigh 800 pounds or 1.
High school's over.
Time for the real world.
Have fun.