Inner-City

He looked up from his desk after thirty seconds of feeling the man's presence beside him. Immediately something was placed in front him, betraying the aura of patience this counselor seemed to hold.

"What's this paper for?"

"Write."

"About?"

"Anything. What you're thinking, what you feel."

"What's this supposed to accomplish?"

"Here's a pencil."

"Give me a pen. I won't be making mistakes."



Date: Thursday, September-whatever number we've given this day/whatever number we've used to label this point in time. Someone will fill this in later, probably. Be sure to use a different color pen so everyone knows it's not me who cared about what the date was.

So apparently your good-for-nothing mumbler and eternally dedicated sloucher of a son has been constraining the tidal tirades of his adolescent self-destruction. You know what those supposedly intellectual psychologists always say behind our backs? They say never to get on the wrong side of a fledgling, lest he beat you back with his wings in self-defense of his own premature feathers; he can't fly, so there's no need to push him from the temporary structure you've set to be his base until he decides it's time to spread his wings. Maybe he will fall, and the sound of the wind whistling through his wings at that deadly slanted angle will fall upon the forced deafness that has become your perception of pain. Yes, I can say I'm responsible for the way I''ve recieved those words, but the stimuli always came from you.

I'd like to say I'm sorry, but that'd involve me delving into the reason I'm here, and that's what whoever's reading this is going to want, to see how I feel about what I did. Well, he's alive. More than I can say for myself. Yeah, wish they could've told me (they, plural, she had to be there when it happened) not to think too much about what being alive actually meant. Maybe some words of restrained wisdom bleeding like salty honey from the lips of a homeless man whose words on life actually MEAN something.

"Son, whatever you do, don't break out of the confines of social ideology, it will ruin you. You may not understand what that means yet, but you will, with time. Maybe you'll be the first of us to go to college and make something of yourself. That'd be good, set goals, learn."

Yeah, or maybe more useful advice:

"Do you know the time you spend sitting at that gazebo is the time you spend living? Feel it. Feel the rush of the withering leaves as they bow down before you, the way the wind is a metaphor for the rise and fall of a gloriously profound symphony, how that same concept applied to speech would cause colors to erupt from our mouths like inkblots of alien-blood; reds, greens, oranges, shifting like a mood ring whenever we try to express ourselves. And what do you think, son, would happen to words?"

Some good that would've done me. I imagine how they must look at me, just a vessel of violence filled with ignorance and hatred toward adult figures, an egocentric collection of nerves and water-based (or ash-based, for you religious nuts) parts fulfilling the purpose of creating

this.

I am this.

The paper was passed from hand to hand later that day so many times that the ink began to smudge. Most of the youths at the correctional facility had writing styles befitting the national "standard" for a fourth grader. Quiet comments, a few remarks, and it was placed upon a stack of papers with equally sloppy handwriting.

"You could've been something, son."