When Your Card Gets Declined At Therapy | Poetry Collection Part 1 ©

Academic Failure

I thought I was over this.

Wrote a poem ’bout it, thinking my mind was at bliss.

But oh, how a teacher can disrupt

The utter silence and peace I gathered all these years

Until I feel like I’d erupt

In tears.

”Grades don’t define you”

I thought we cleared that up, I wrote about it in verses,

Maybe I should again, just to show the curses

This system has put upon us.

I’ve been out of highschool for two years, almost done,

Thought the grueling memories of my past back then have gone.

But time has never run

It stopped briefly, to haunt me back just yet.

And I remember,

My family jokingly had bet

That the time at vocational school would be heaven and bliss,

Oh if you only knew what I’d miss.

School can not only crumble existence, it ruins dreams and hope,

Until a student can no longer cope.

The only thing I thought I’d be good at,

English, writing texts, and poems like these,

A thing I thought I had mastered at ease

Was squashed under her words and a line drawn by colored pencil - who does that even - like leaves under a boot.

If she knew I had written three books in a language foreign to me, a language I’ve known this well for over 10 years in my life,

She’d stick to me for fame, like a bee to a hive.

If she knew I don’t speak my native tongue anymore, merely because I don’t have German friends I can bore

With it, I’d rather speak the foreign tongue.

”Grades don’t define you” Oh but they do.

Especially since you f@cking knew I could have done better when you handed me the stupid letter.

Covering the grade with your hand, I only saw it cropped.

”So unlike yourself” you muttered, and my heart had fluttered and then dropped.

Yes, I am damaged, who knew.

From school, from A’s and D’s and not getting them, from teachers like you.

Yes, I am petrified, of revived teachers like you,

Whose power merely lies in a pencil and a book, determining how my future is made by how your desires are laid.

Feeling a bit grumpy, I failed.

Feeling good, and I might just pass.

And I can’t stand it, all this shass.

”It’s just a simple mistake, you can ease it out”

To you it’s a grade, to me it’s everything everyone has ever cared about.

I was someone they spoke to and looked at merely of my grades, I was a showpiece.

I should be over it,

Hiding the past, covering it up like dark circles with concealer

Although none is vicious enough to last.

Now, my soul should be at ease.

Yes I can ease

It out, but my mind still circles all around

The fact that people might avoid me once again.

So f@ck you, Miss M.S, I hate you now, despised you then,

For ruining my mental state.

I won’t fall back.

We’re all going forward, we aren’t going back.

Welcome to the German school system.

Welcome to the slate shoved into your heart, never to leave.

”It’s just a grade”

And yet my mind isn’t at ease.