Drop Out Poem by Ernest Hilbert

By the time you learned it was Lyme disease
It was "advanced." The sports clinic sent you
Home with aspirin for an entire year.
With tuition due and an expired lease,
You sell your books. You've got debt, and flu,
So you make fewer classes, drink less beer,
Wait more tables, then, finally, sell your blood.
You skip your morning class but still can't sleep.
Your so-called boyfriend won't call back. What's next?
If you can just finish the year... but the flood
Of failures continues, and you feel cheap.
You're a week late. And then the dreaded text...
Your life piles up like wet laundry. It seems
Senseless, and what is that? Are those screams? Screams?