A Desired Difference

Ode to Damien

"When writing a poem, you have to have a rhyming pattern. It could be ABAB, or ABBABB, etcetera. Your goal today is to write an ode."
I listen intensely, my hands hidden in my school sweatshirt and my long, brown-red hair tied in a messy knot behind my head. I take notes all over my paper making sure not to miss a thing. I need this extra credit so bad.

"Damn Tay, you look exhausted. You ok?" Damien Bluely is my best friend and always knows when I'm out of it. I hate him for it, but... really I don't.

I rub my eyes, and I can practically feel my eye bags pulling my face down, "yeah, uh, just stayed up late last night.." I shake off a yawn and realize everyone is littering their papers with stanzas and sentences and rhymes. What the hell... the ode isn't due until Monday. I'm not doing it now. Damien shakes me, and I realize I had dozed, "dude, you should get some coffee or some shit. You're going off two hours of sleep." How'd he know that?

I rub my eyes and raise my hand. "Tatum? Do you need something?" asks Ms. Meiers.

"Uhm-" I rub my eyes and sit up straight, "can I go to the bathroom? It won't take long."

"Sure," she says, gesturing me to come to her for a hall pass."

"Thank you" I say quickly before taking off down the hall. Only Damien knows how much time I really spend in the school bathroom. Probably more than half my day honestly. I do all my homework in there, sometimes I nap, sometimes I cry, it just depend. Now, I'm going in there to listen to music and splash my face. Napping isn't always the best idea in the 9th grade girl's bathroom.

I brought my grammar notebook with me. Maybe I'll get a start on my poem. Maybe. What do you write poems about though? I usually write a small stanza or two about government corruption or human evolution, but we can't do that for this assignment.

I lock myself in the handicap school (no one in Malguania high school is disabled so I don't have to feel bad) and sit on the floor, taking out my phone and headphones. I end up putting on some random Panic! At The Disco album and opening my notebook.

I avoid pulling my knees up to my chest, due to my fat thighs and chubby middle. People tell me I'm perfect and that they'd kill for my body, but they've never seen me in shorts. It's not the kind of thick beauty you see with the Kardashians; it's a fat pale ugly that giggles when you walk and and is always hidden under jeans and a dark red Malguania high school sweatshirt.

I do dislike my body and my appearance, but I don't like doing my makeup and I don't really care what people think of me. It's not like I'm unhealthy; I'm tall and my body fat is distributed in a healthy way. I just have a bit... much of it.

Damien avoids commenting on my weight at all costs. Sometime's I'll go out and buy new shoes or a new necklace, and he never fails to compliment me on them. I like him for that... he's like a sweet brother.

I open to a blank page in my notebook and bring my pencil to the page. I begin writing:

with eyes like dull oak wood and skin like powerst cinnamon, you never fail to make me smile.
i love when i walk into your house, the way you walked into my life, and you say, "take off your shoes and stay a while."

I'm more than positive that I'm doing this entirely wrong. I find it difficult to write poetry about upbeat topics. Kurt Vonnegut, Edgar Allan Poe, Tyler Joseph, and Maya Angelou are my biggest inspirations, all for good reasons. But they're most likely the reason I'm not skilled in joyful writings

I add to my poem:

sometime's you push me and i get really mad,
but that doesn't mean what you do is bad.