Survival instinct

 

I don't know how I survived school…

the bullying, the isolation,

the walls always closing in.

 

A mental prison whose doors

I couldn't ever unlock,

as I never understood

that my mind was the key.

 

I just stumbled through days.

A stay of execution, awaiting

the day they realise I'm faking it.

 

Trying not to speak,

not to say anything

in case it was turned back my way.

 

Or in case anyone was able

to see the flat, two-dimensional me

had no idea what he was doing.

 

Lessons leached away any brain power,

leaking. Struggling to comprehend

any meaning in anything anyone said or did.

 

Everything just washed over me.

 

So I'd sit glazed over, words soaking me,

as I gaze out of the window, at the rain pouring,

sloshing over my smoothed glass-like brain,

like the rivulets down the windowpane.

 

I couldn't hold it in.

Words floated near to my ears,

then drifted aimlessly away.

 

But somehow,

I caught brief snippets,

little fragments

that my brain stored away.

 

See, I've always had a strange mind.

 

Memories I need

are stored in a box

behind a locked door

labelled with a warning sign.

Whereas useless facts

spring forward

at almost any time.

Unless I actively need them.

 

A sponge wrung dry,

but the memories still remain.

 

But I always felt simple, naive,

lost, a set of instructions written

in alien tongue, but also a deep

intelligence somewhere hidden from

view. Just tied to the depths of my soul.

 

I don't know how I survived school.

 

I was in a daze

most of the days.

I'd be lost in my haze,

and nobody knew

I was running through

this maze, screaming

for someone to show me the way.