Hello Teacher. Today is another day in class and I am watching earnestly as you pace back and forth and gesture your hands in odd manners to correspond with your speech. I watch you address the class with the subject you are teaching and I watch your lips move, surely, but silently. I say silently because I cannot hear you. I am too swelled by a pain that courses through me slowly like crimson blood bleeds leisurely from a capillary.

I am sitting, hoping you will notice. I am hoping that your eye will align with mine and that in that instant every pain will transfer and you will be become of aware of me. I am hoping that you will see the scars who have signed their signatures on the board of my flesh: the welts on my legs, the bruises my abdomen and back, the scratches on my neck, the hollow carving in my heart. I want you to see these things.

I watch you, waiting for you to make a move, but as the class hour passes minute by minute you do not see me. Finally class is over and I’m waiting for you to call me aside; perhaps you wanted to address me after class to avoid embarrassment. You do not call me. You simply smile and tell me goodbye. You do not see and you do notice. I want you to. I want you to make the first move because I cannot. I am without voice, without words, without speech. You must be talk for me.

Hey teacher. Today is another class day and once again I am still hoping, brimming with the optimism that today will be the day; the turning point that will bring vast change. Once again, I watch you sternly, but it’s kind of hard to focus. I have new signatures on my body, more unique and fancier than than the previous. Fatigue is setting in. My eyes are heavy and my body is throbbing. I’m slowly swaying from side to side and to this you look oddly. I’m thinking, yes, you notice, but now you are laughing and you are asking me what song I am listening. This is disappointing. Once again the class adjourns and once again you do not notice.

Why do you not notice! Why you cannot see! Everyday I pound the air with silent screams and desperate cries for help. I keep my eyes steadfast on you, hoping that you will do the same, but you do not. I just want you to notice. I just want you to say something. I getting tired. So tired!

Hi teacher. I am in your class again, sitting in the same seat. My assurance in you is dwindling, but I am still fighting this battle of belief, not allowing myself to succumb to doubt’s unruly hand. I am holding fast to hope as dear as a mother holds her deceased child tenaciously to her body, in hopes that life will fill it’s lungs and it will cry and awake as it did before.

Teacher, I am scared. I have a new friend, at least---that is the safest way I can describe him. He is scaring me, but not intentionally. He is here in the room, but you cannot see him. No one can but me. He is watching me sternly and he is smiling unending, gesturing for me to come with him. His semblance is nerve racking and I wish he would leave. Teacher I am scared! He is walking towards me. My chest is pounding and I am breathing heavy. He is coming closer and now he sits beside me in the empty chair beside my desk. My heart stops and I am left with the repetitive motion of breathe blindly coming in and going out. I am panicking and as usual you are wondering, but not acting. Another class day ends and once again you do nothing.

Goodbye teacher. Today I am in your class and I am standing in the corner with my friend watching you. You cannot see me. I am invisible. I am covered in signatures, old and new and fatigue no longer fills me. Instead, I am wide awake. I am watching you one last time and just as sternly as before. I am hearing you clearly now. Now I am in front of you and I am looking right into your eyes. I am looking with the same eyes that looked a thousand times before, wishing that you will notice. I wanted you to notice me! I needed you to notice me! Well, now you will notice, just not as I as I was wishing you would. It is time for me to go teacher. My friend is telling me that it is time to go. So, this is my farewell. Surely you will notice now...next time, with the next person. Goodbye teacher.