One Room Where Two Was Blue

The math test

was an abstract drawing

in black and white,

but my teacher said,

no.

Still, my ears saw five's

striking shade of yellow

melt when orange burned

straight up seven,

then turned the wrong way,

as flames sometimes will.

I could have sung

the sideways ladder

of notes

climbing the rainbow

of voices arranged

by vibrato and timbre,

each part composed

of equal beauty,

the sum, a garden

of flowers exhaling

 infinite fragrance,

the value of each

determined by faeries.

But the teacher said,

I was wrong.

Only one

roundly right answer,

flatly wedged between

a lack of possibilities,

her graphite eyes denying

mathematics my imagination.

The concept escaped me

and I was failed.

Words were leaves

growing wild,

secret trees,

a forest hidden in

head and heart.

A poem's leaf curled green;

a boat, green as water

where I'd float

out to the mystic sea.

But, each day in English,

attendance was taken

on the shore

where we marched like oysters,

nothing more.

Dry essays rolled

in plain bread crumbs,

narration's fried numb

construction of walled

off window fronts,

pat paragraphs

of structural precision,

the content;

naked mannequins displayed-

posing and saying nothing,

given A's.

With hatred's

love of art,

in defiance of vapid cruelty

and negation of creative excellence,

I beautifully butchered

my mannequins

and gave them hearts.

For my transgression

I was given C's

and kept after class,

the walrus winking,

do as they do,

I can't be thinking,

run along,

be dull,

and I will

give you A's.

One room

where the world

smelled of paper, paint,

and what was not yet

made real,

the feel of charcoal,

a stick of dark cloud,

smudging paper's white skin,

shading fear's corner,

where death was put

into perspective,

black eyes drawn

to the center of the page,

where he was forced

to watch me live

in bright self-portraits.

I learned to hate school early.

But I loved learning.

Moving every six months

to a year,

I jumped through

convenient cracks

wearing a homemade mask

and no one ever knew

my name.

I lived in hiding,

burrowed in a shelf

at the end

of a far off row,

a refugee feeding

on my stolen stack

of loot,

spines binding the scattered

hopes,

paths of pages

my hunger devoured,

voraciously keeping one eye

out for the librarian

who had the power

to take away my books

and send me back.