On the first day of class we sign a promise not to plagiarize

But really it’s a balance

Between copying

And knowing what you want to hear

Because our own words aren’t in your answer key

You can’t cite scars

Wyatt, Jasmine could turn in a 10,000 word essay about what it’s like to work fifty hours a week

On top of forty hours of school

On top of helping raise her five brothers and sisters

On top of insomnia      

and depression

But that’s not what you want to hear

And when Liang, Eric shows up in class without his essay instructing him to

“Discuss the role of suicide in Hamlet’s ‘To be, or not to be’ soliloquy”

Because he can still recall

The hazy fluorescents of the emergency room at three in the morning

With all the safe, rounded corners

And his mother’s tired, tired eyes

And he has nothing to say when you tell him that you are disappointed

Because he’s heard it a thousand times before

You don’t want synthesis

You want regurgitation

Ideas designated as satisfactory in the syllabus

Predestinated pass or fail

But synthesis can not be ranked on a scale

Quantified A through F

Synthesis is messy

And broken

Synthesis is taking hours of nightmares overlapping panic

Taking bruised knuckles and lonely nights

Taking what life gives you

And making something of your own