Highschool Poem by Cherie Mort

We talk about our test grades at lunchtime
Take every spare minute doing homework
Carry around backpacks like turtle shells, only all the space is taken up by books
We trade carrots like drugs
And celebrate free love, freedom of speech and political opinions
We speak for our rights and wishes
We work with every spare minute, even skipping nourishment for knowledge
We stay up at night until our eyelids are weighed down by iron lashes over stone eyes
We fall like old statues upon a soft bed, catching us before we break
And close our eyes, dropping into a quicksand sleep that takes forever to begin, forever to end
We drift through long days that go around in circles, months and years muddling together into 'memories' of 'life'

But in another place, perhaps an alternative universe,
We talk about our relationships
Don't even attempt homework
Don't even carry backpacks, and walk straight and tall, as opposed to hunchbacked and disfigured
We trade drugs like carrots
And give love so much we wreck our lives and create families and mistakes we can't go back on
Taking lives as legal as the law allows
We swear and dress obscene, like we've been taught
We follow out our parents' stories when we promised ourselves long ago that we wouldn't
We get beauty sleep, other than the nights we spend awake
And sleep on feathers in a lead bed
We remember only the good times and live out the bad like it'll go away eventually
But as we wake up, we know it won't