Girl
Blue shirt
She never wore anything else
She is sitting alone.
Always
Not because she doesn’t have friends,
but because she chooses to.
She studies in an empty classroom,
while the rest of us mingle in the hallways,
exhausting our voice boxes.
I have to look away so she doesn’t rub off on me
She is pretty.
But doesn’t smile and wears that same blue shirt
Everyday.
Lunchtime,
I watch her hastily make a sandwich and walk out of the room
I wonder where she takes it,
where she dwells alone, while everyone is together.
Time,
Everyone takes it, going from class to class.
Running into friends along the way,
having two minute conversations with each.
She walks ahead of everyone,
determined to arrive at class before anyone else
To make a good impression on the teacher?
No one knows why.
Nor do they care.
So if I do not care, then why am I wasting my time thinking about her
Discipline
She does not need a mother, or a father, or anyone telling her what to do.
She does everything herself.
But if she is never told what to do, how will she know when to stop?
She will continue torturing herself for as long as she lives
That is, if she is living…
Life
What is a life, where all you do is work, and pull out all the strands of your hair?
She doesn’t know how to talk to people her own age
She can bat her eyelashes at an adult,
but cannot waste a second smiling at a friend
Most can be seen obsessively writing to their friends
She uses her instant message only to ask about work.
I gladly answer her and then she tells me she has to go.
I do what I always do when I say goodbye, xoxo
She just writes “bye”.

Boy
In our class
He goes by the name of Samm
but he spells it with two m’s
just to be unique, he claims.
Stupid Samm
is what he is known as.
He doesn’t do his work
And when he does, it is never on time
His test scores are low
But through my observant eyes, he is brilliant.
I look over his shoulder and watch him draw,
intricate designs and images in his notebook,
poems in the margins of his textbook.
He is a loyal friend
who can laugh at his own faults.
Something many of us cannot do.
Take the girl in the blue shirt, and the doodling boy and ask anyone who is smarter.
Everyone would say the girl in the blue shirt.
But if all she can trust are the grades she receives,
how will she ever survive in a grade-less world
Samm will then be on top
and she will be sitting alone once again, waiting for a little red A+
to fall in her lap.
How do you lead your own life,
if you need to be constantly being told by a red pen that you are smart.