She Asked Me if I Miss Middle School
She asked me if I missed middle school.
Three years out of high school.
Something that was seven, eight, nine years ago?
So, do you miss middle school?
And do you miss us girls?
The tight hallways suffocating and dark
Getting you ready for high school
The depression that set in heavy when everyone realized I was different and sensitive
The words that would dig deep and hurt for years
The anxiety that slipped and tripped into my life one year when I realize that one day I would be eighteen and responsible
But because of how I couldn’t sew a locker pocket, according to my teacher, I would fail as an adult.
The flip flopping of identity
Forced into a square that I did not fit
Not supposed to mix and match
But be that way. Be that way and do so with silence.
While pretty girls with pretty eyes who can put on eye shadow pretty okay
Told me to die at the tender age of thirteen, twelve, eleven, a few months ten.
Setting me up for the rest of my life
To unlearn, forget, forgive, unlearn, forget, and forgive.
Afraid of trust and throwing up and always ready to spring into a diet, self-loathing explosion where eventually, inevitably, fall apart.
Setting up that personality for high school
Setting up that mold that I melted into for four more years of muffled screaming through concrete walls
And lectures about life and love, and oh yes, what even better that that slight smiles
Inducing embarrassing look back at how awkward and flighty, how clumsy and out of it I was in regards to love?
She asked me if I missed middle school while
I wrote a college essay
Got ready for the end of another semester, closer to a degree, she asked me
Looking at the list of names, familiar faces hidden with obscurity of trends and filters and change
The bullies, the Okays, the friends casually lost and friends forced out.
Yeah
I say
Yeah.
I miss middle school.
Three years out of high school.
Something that was seven, eight, nine years ago?
So, do you miss middle school?
And do you miss us girls?
The tight hallways suffocating and dark
Getting you ready for high school
The depression that set in heavy when everyone realized I was different and sensitive
The words that would dig deep and hurt for years
The anxiety that slipped and tripped into my life one year when I realize that one day I would be eighteen and responsible
But because of how I couldn’t sew a locker pocket, according to my teacher, I would fail as an adult.
The flip flopping of identity
Forced into a square that I did not fit
Not supposed to mix and match
But be that way. Be that way and do so with silence.
While pretty girls with pretty eyes who can put on eye shadow pretty okay
Told me to die at the tender age of thirteen, twelve, eleven, a few months ten.
Setting me up for the rest of my life
To unlearn, forget, forgive, unlearn, forget, and forgive.
Afraid of trust and throwing up and always ready to spring into a diet, self-loathing explosion where eventually, inevitably, fall apart.
Setting up that personality for high school
Setting up that mold that I melted into for four more years of muffled screaming through concrete walls
And lectures about life and love, and oh yes, what even better that that slight smiles
Inducing embarrassing look back at how awkward and flighty, how clumsy and out of it I was in regards to love?
She asked me if I missed middle school while
I wrote a college essay
Got ready for the end of another semester, closer to a degree, she asked me
Looking at the list of names, familiar faces hidden with obscurity of trends and filters and change
The bullies, the Okays, the friends casually lost and friends forced out.
Yeah
I say
Yeah.
I miss middle school.