I hear the words whispered
behind my back
I turn, and wish they were silent.
They never are.
Every day since I was eight
I’ve endured rumours and stares.
Today I chased them
the voices behind the rumours.
I ran with rage, but rage gives way
to depression.
They escaped.
They think I want to kill them.
I just want to ask
to beg them to stop.
Teases reach my ear,
and I turn
and smile ferally
to watch one back away.
But turning back, the smile dissolves
into a tear-filled grimace.
Inside the class I huddle up
to sit and stew in my agony
and feel the tears and the need to cry.
But after fifteen years of this
I taught myself never to cry.
I taught myself not to.
But you taught me to cry again.
behind my back
I turn, and wish they were silent.
They never are.
Every day since I was eight
I’ve endured rumours and stares.
Today I chased them
the voices behind the rumours.
I ran with rage, but rage gives way
to depression.
They escaped.
They think I want to kill them.
I just want to ask
to beg them to stop.
Teases reach my ear,
and I turn
and smile ferally
to watch one back away.
But turning back, the smile dissolves
into a tear-filled grimace.
Inside the class I huddle up
to sit and stew in my agony
and feel the tears and the need to cry.
But after fifteen years of this
I taught myself never to cry.
I taught myself not to.
But you taught me to cry again.
~Cry, by ShatteredScribe
“A poem written shortly before the end of the last school year, in April. It was specifically written April 29th, 2011, right after my mother had to come and pull me from school early because the bullying I had been taking had gotten to be too much for me to take and I had a breakdown in the middle of my Spanish class.”
You Will Rise Project 