MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 24

My life is leaving me behind and so is the bus.

We’re already getting grades back and I give enough fucks to fill a thimble.

My fucks are the empty bulb of the hourglass:

I have none left, they have trickled down

like sand.

Still, when Ms. Gladstone asks for me to wait after last period, her eyes are honey brown

and the light in them shines sad,

and I think my mother might look like this

if she ever actually looked at my report cards anymore.

When someone who hates you tells you

you’re falling behind

it has a way of turning your whole heart into a shield

to deflect the bullets of their words.

When someone who loves you tells you

you’re falling behind,

the shield

your whole life

turns to paper.

Ms. Gladstone talks to me

like she loves me, but when she asks

Is something going on

I still can’t tell her because behind her

on the shelf is a picture of her

and the Colonel, hands linked—

Field Day, school colors painted on their faces,

smiles on their mouths. I tell her nothing

and that I have to catch the bus before

it leaves me behind too.

I sprint down the halls—

the bell has rung and no one can tell me

to stop, so I go and go, and if a child in me

survives, she imagines she is a horse in the Derby

and the other Thoroughbreds aren’t even close.

Even so, the city bus leaves me, and to keep

running would be stupid, so eventually I stop,

my Meat Palace uniform dangling out of my backpack

like it too wishes it could escape

this day,

this life.

Coach Tinsley is walking toward the field

with the track team—he’s new

this year—and he waves his clipboard,

shouts

“Come warm up. You’d smoke the girls at the Mason-Dixon” and I whisper

Fuck you

under my breath, under my breathless,

but for once I’m glad the intended ear can’t hear

because the smile in his eyes is real

even if his offer isn’t.