‘‘Don’t look at me,’’ I cried.‘‘Why?’’‘‘Because I might cry,’’ I breathed.Nobody had ever done something so romantic and big to me, absolutely no one had ever done that Its okay, that is what gets to happen to you every day when you are in love with a poet.‘‘Can we sit?’’ he requested.I looked at him and smiled as I weighed my options should I sit with him or not.‘‘We will just sit, nothing else,’’ je affirmed.‘‘But why would you want to sit with me, why?’’It was only fair that I asked him the question again. No one ever minded me or looked my way, let alone request to sit with me or even write me nice poems, why would he do that for me.‘‘Because I want to,’’ he answered.‘‘That’s not enough, nobody ever sits with me or wants to have a conversation with me, at all. That’s why I am asking why you want to,’’ I inquired again.I hatred being charity cases, I hated being the object of sympathy.‘‘Because I want to, and because that’s reason enough, to me you are a pure, honest

The world is in constant motion and those who passed by at one point are going to come back their someday, to complete the journey full circle. That’s what Cage believed in, he believed he was going to see his sister someday. It was called hope, faith. Or like Emily Dickson described it. Hope is the thing without feathers that perches in the soul and sings the tune without the words and never stops at all. The kind of hope he had was dangerous. It was the kind that destroyed you and ate you alive inside. I knew how it felt like, it was a hopeless, desperate way to go, one that would always end in misery. I had wanted to tell him that that’s how I used to feel like when my mama went away. Some strong kind hope that she would be back and pick from where she left. Pick the broken pieces and fix them back together. It was positive hope at first, the first few years when I saved money and bought her a dress, she liked and new shoes from a nearby store. Then went ahead to draw many picture

I took the stairs one at a time, held and adjusted my dress on the shoulder to prevent it from showing too much skin, or should I say fat. I was wearing a black dress, one of the most decent things I owned and held on to.I wore the same dress on every occasion, every family outing, picnic, and everywhere we went that wasn't school. No amount of therapy could make me wear another dress. At this point, everyone had stopped convincing me that there were other dresses outside here that could make me look better, beautiful, and more visually appealing or attractive.All my clothes were meant to help me blend in and not stand out. Black was one of my favorite colors; anything black or dark was my ideal color and piece of clothing. I felt like they hid me from the world, protected me from publicity, covered me like armor, and made me blend in.Some time back, about two years ago, Sandra's mama had bought both of us a pair of shoes. Sandra and I. It was a good move to establish a good friends

Faults are always thick where love is thin. Yeah, where there is no love or almost none at all, there are many faults. Another morning, but this one would be different, it wouldn’t be like the others, first I would come to school earlier than usual to change the narrative. I had accepted a ride from my papa to drop me in school too. Something that I never did at all. Changing the narrative, finally flipping the tables. Hopefully the principal would be able to see that I was always being bullied from the multiple videos that had been posted online. There was no way I could post bad and awful photos of me, photos of me with a towel or running in the hallways looking scared and ready to die. There was no way I could take them either, it was just awful and unrealistic. Just incase it was needed I had a list of al the bullies. A list of about ten people written n a piece of paper. To make things easy, I would just produce it when needed. We arrived at the parking lot and papa stopped th

I was late for class again, but this round with a note from the principal himself. I drugged my legs and feet along the hallway corridors, hoping the first lesson would be over soon. If my guess was right, it was math’s class. Whether I attended the class or not, it didn’t matter. One class wouldn’t change or improve my grade in any way. My ties and relationship with math had been cut off even before I was done. They had literally been cut off when I was still an infant inside the womb. No matter how hard I tried, nothing good ever came out of my math class, exams or exercise book. I reached the door as usual and it was indeed math. I pulled the door open and all the students seemed to be bored, the mood of the math teacher was also down in the dumps. That was very typical at Maslow High School, no one cared. The students didn’t care, the teacher didn’t care. The moment Mr. Thomas saw me, his mood lightened up abruptly as he stopped whatever he was doing and arranged the rulers and