"Tell me about yourself."

My teacher thumbs through a stack of personality pages,

plops one, unceremoniously, on my desk.

 

"This is just so I can get to know you all." 

She says. Her smile is strained. 

She isn't wearing a wedding ring, 

but

I know from an upperclassman that she's married. 

I wonder what she would tell us about herself. 

 

The boy sitting four seats in front of me 

is

the class president.  

On his desk he has:

two sharpened pencils,

one black ink pen,

and a gum eraser. 

He always gets the highest grade on every test. 

This morning I saw his dad yelling at him in the parking lot. 

I wonder what he would tell us about himself. 

 

The girl sitting two seats behind 

and one row to the left of me

has

smudged makeup. Tired eyes. 

I think maybe she was who I heard crying in the bathroom before class. 

She scrawls three lines on her page,

drops her pen, 

lays her head on the desk. 

I wonder what she would tell us about herself. 

 

I sit in the middle of the classroom. 

I am 

no one special. 

But that does not mean I am not 

a story of my own.  

My fingers are ink stained, 

my tongue heavy with words I do not say. 

On my desk is the final book in my favorite series. 

What would I tell you about myself?

 

I am -

a writer,

with words etched into my bones 

and poetry curving around the shell of my ear.

 

I am -

a reader,

of people and books. 

I've come to learn that a mind filled with stories

is apt at picking up the pieces of other's stories. 

 

I am -

a girl,

struggling to find the balance of real and raw

in a world obsessed with the

glossing over 

and

sugar coating 

of flaws.