i once knew a boy who devoured knowledge
he studied maps of stars and dates of archaic endings and the level of oxygen in the air and he knew a few words in french and a few in arabic
he held onto threadbare books as if they were his lifeline and his safety lay inside torn pages scribbled and underlined and highlighted
he knew a math formula forwards and backwards but only this one and the numbers filled his head and he started to see equations wherever he went
he needed constant stimulation and to pour trivia facts found in magazines that weren't worth much into his thoughts and absorb the detail he saw in a recipe and digest a new phrase in latin
(he knows twenty-three)
sometimes he'd lay awake and words would replace his vision and soon enough he had three pages of nonsensical theories splayed out on a screen except it makes sense to someone somewhere and he needed to get it out to quiet the noise in his brain
he loved knowledge and it was just that simple
i don't know this boy anymore
(someone forced his beautiful brain into a box of structure he couldn't fit and the way he dreamed was wrong and somewhere his spine snapped under the numbers 3.45 grade point average and there were too many commas in his essays and he wasn't kept awake by dreams but by the feeling that he wasn't enough and there were too many tests tomorrow and he stuffed that mind with facts he knew were diluted and his shoulders are too tense now and sometimes he just doesn't understand and he can't miss the lecture good lord he can't and my god they called this education)
YOU ARE READING
Symptoms of Starlight | Poetry
Poetry"you've been brushed by the need for something greater, your head waits for a crown." In which a girl writes down everything from 2 am thoughts to afternoon drabbles to empowering poems in hopes it all means something.
