It’s a school of honors and honor students

Who balance themselves on the edge

Of excellence and nothingness

And everyday 

The paper, books, sentences, numbers, deadlines

Crush them

The weight intensified by the words of the ones encouraging

“You can do it!”

“You don’t want to end up with a dead end job.”

“Do not disappoint us.” 

Cannot disappoint the ones who say so

There is no release, no way to escape their chaining intentions

That does not go around the problem

Shove the work away and play

But it looms, abandoned in the corner, knowing that you must return

Some find relief in substances

But it rots them away, in a far more expensive and putrid way then the papers do

The strugglers

Fight back sleep as they try to finish the day’s burdens

And arrive the next day only to receive more to keep them awake through the night

As if they did not have enough to overthink about

It corrodes them

They can only balance for so long before their feet begin to doubt

And they slip

Some have lifelines that keep them from plummeting down

But they might just suspend them in space

While they have no strength to climb back up to balance again

And they give in.