She walks down the hallway, stomach twisting
because everyone stares at her and she knows why.
She flushes red and stares down,
too embarrassed to look up at the growing crowd.
This girl is just like everyone else in the hallway:
she has two eyes and a mouth and a face
but her eyes are framed by thick glasses
and her mouth is full of braces
and her face is covered with red acne.
The unknowing call out their unwanted opinions:
ugly, nerd, fat, geek
The girl is tripped by a foot stuck out in front of her
by no other than a so-called friend
who has chosen to betray her in favor of the other side.
She falls, bruising more than simply her pride.
The bell rings, a bell that the girl is glad to hear.
The crowd slowly disperses, leaving her
in the hallway to retrieve her belongings.
She does so quietly, silently, alone.
After a while she stands and wipes her eyes
and walks to class. When she arrives,
face streaked with tear stains,
no questions are asked, and no answers are given.
She merely sits and takes out a pencil and learns
just like yesterday and the day before and the day before.
Silently she wipes away the last of her tears,
erasing the last of the evidence of the day's event.
She takes a deep breath to calm herself, and then
puts on her mask of calamity so that it is hidden once more:
the pain, the heartache, the constant hurt.
This is how she spends her days,
every day of every month of every year--
pretending to be okay to avoid questions,
avoid suspicion, avoid consequences.
But how long can someone keep that bottled up,
keep it hidden from everyone?
Soon others will find out, unhappily.
And people wonder why this happens? Because of the monsters within us,
the monsters that feed off of the pain of others,
the monsters that have to bring others down to elevate themselves.
It is only after these vicious monsters are destroyed
that there is any hope for change; unfortunately
these monsters can almost never be truly slayed.
This is the reality of our world: accept it or change it.