A conversation between adults—too many
words, too big for my mouth: evaluation,
analysis, cognitive. Before graduating high
school by the skin of my angst-ridden teeth, I spent
an hour a day in a special room
for special kids, my embarrassment
taking up more space than I felt entitled to.
The other kids focused on a woman,
warm as a prison guard, came to shuffle me away.
A vacant conference room to take tests—
the emptiness, an insult. Their eyes fidget,
anxious to find a sign of stupidity
with every twirl of my pencil—I couldn’t turn
the curves of C’s and D’s
into the perfect lines of A’s
without a choir of voices
reporting that I have the ability,
that I can do better. That the potential
is there, just aching to be used.
James Roach (they/he) is a queer, trans, sober poet most creative between the hours of up-too-late and is it even worth going to bed? He currently lives on stolen land in St. Louis. To read some of his published works, visit his linktree: Published Poems
Serotonin 