It started with awkward smiles

And uncomfortable silences

That stretched

Longer and longer

The more we got to know each other.

And the more we didn’t want to.

I sat there and watched,

As others’ smiles became more relaxed,

And gradually turned genuine.

Walking down that tiny hallway with no windows,

Past the rows of faceless lockers,

Watch the smiling faces increase by each day,

Not sure if they were real,

Or as hollow as my own.

Sitting through speeches

About staying together.

As a community,

A family.

As brothers and sisters?

Yawning and

Gagging and

Getting splinters on the rotting wood.

Leaning against my locker

With a journal disguised as a notebook

Filled with dates and

Thoughts only to be read again by myself and

Appointments and

Interviews that would have never mattered and

Pages after pages of blankness never to be filled out,

By the pen full of ink

Sitting in my messy ponytail

That I didn’t bother taking out.

Wishing someone would approach

But the footsteps around me

Were always for someone else.

Giving superficial hugs

With matching smiles,

While my mind

Is in a far away place

That I knew I would never go to,

But couldn’t help think about.

Even after two years,

I find myself sitting in a stifling room

Staring into

The eyes of people

I was supposed to be best friends with

While the only thing we had in common,

Was that we were all about to fall asleep

From watching

Yet another documentary.

I watch other people’s lives

Continue to thrive,

And wonder

Whatever happened to mine.

Thought that

Perhaps it was lost,

In those endless and unbearable silences

We spent hours on,

When we were supposed to be bonding.

I watched,

As time went faster and faster.

As we get into the final round

I watch people laugh their final laugh,

Cry their final tears.

As I tried to cry with them,

The tears wouldn’t come.

I watched

And thought

And pretended

I was someplace else.

I was somebody else,

Who had a life,

Instead of running away

At the first sign of people.

Maybe I wasn’t good enough.

Maybe I just wasn’t good enough.