It was the year the band teacher called a boy “retarded”
for picking sky blue sticky tack off the walls.
It was the year an eighth grader dissolved ex-lax into a
seventh graders Gatorade, who soiled his pants
running the mile next period in P.E. It was the year
someone stuffed leaked newspaper articles about
my father- the politician- into my locker. The year
I had to touch my toes for the vice principal to see if I was
compliant with the dress code. It was the year I ran
for seventh grade president and started calling my mother
by her first name. Linda and I painted campaign signs for weeks-
“Be a Smartie, Vote for Blythe!” and “Don’t be an Airhead, Vote for
Blythe!” with respective candies attached to white poster board.
One was a photo of my face with a milk mustache saying,
“Got Blythe?” The day after the posters went up, they came
down. My face: ripped. The candy: hijacked. (Jokes on you,
hooligans, that shit was stale.) My eyes and teeth were
blackened with sharpie and upside-down crosses graced
my forehead. It was the year that, every day, I wrote
in my journal so furiously, my hot pen singed through
layers of loose-leaf sheets. Every day, I wrote
I WANT TO GET OUT OF HERE in the margins
of my algebra notes. None of it was a poem.
The point is, every day,
I wrote.