by Andrew Hellyer

This piece originally ran in Read This!, a literary magazine written and edited by high school students from San Lorenzo High School, ranging in age from 14 to 18 years old. This issue of Read This! was designed at 826 Valencia with the help of our tutors and volunteers.

Totalitarian designed punishments inflicted my constant hasty attitude; Ready to defend myself verbally at all times. Not just another textbook teenager; But someone who honestly deserved better. Patience, my heart beats violently, bruising my insides as I wait for their arrival. My wardens in a prison of relentless demands and consequences. Stuck stupidly staring out my window for the slightest glimpse of headlights to appear. So many thoughts and bad “What if’s” run through my mind, I’m so tired the pain could see through my eyes. Uneasiness crawled through my blood bearing its nails through my veins shredding them beyond repair. Staring for hours just waiting for the slightest glimpse of a shimmer or beam of light from the car parked in front of my house. Fear and betrayal was burned into the under part of my eyelids, pushing into my mind when illusions of being awake surprise me. At last, my heart knocked no more, it was afraid to come out. The lights were near. The black horse with rubber wheels led them to me. I prayed, to no one, expecting no answer, I prayed that they wouldn’t hear me. Hear me cry from the pain inside. The pain that’s so unbearable and repetitious. The hate that wraps its tentacles around my brain clogging all my pores and arresting my endorphins, paralyzing my quarter inch sphere of happiness.

The war that never ends, LIFE. A battle fought with adjectives, nouns, verbs, etc., as well as a dictionary of smartass comebacks. Your fake seniority has no worth, just a pedestal built with respect earned by the years. A ridiculous I.O.U. for the troubles you claim to put up with, troubles everyone will have to deal with sooner or later. A bunch of worthless excuses to be rude and uptight as well as disrespectful because you should know better. This is you.

Now I must ration my words to my family because "to the point” is all they care for. Feelings and emotions become excuses to help my punishments seem more deserving so the burden of guilt can no longer cascade over the shoulders of my crucial critics. Your desire to feel superior torments my skin with self-inflicted scars for pain that can only be handled physically because my emotional barriers have been capsized by your ocean of brutal spurts of discriminating words and acidic saliva that contacts my face when arguments are abroad. Your spit of hate seeps into my tear ducts, releasing all valves of hatred and discomforting passion to lash out and buried my weapon of insanity to the deepest crevasses of mutanic atoms combusting from the doomed soul that peeks through your broken fingertips as preparation is taken to treat my self-esteem as my emotions. “For my own good” are the words said as I sit in the back seat of a police car sharing my feelings through a hand signal, as I yell repeatedly: “You’re nothing to me, nothing at all.”