I want out so badly.

Mom, I know you’re proud of me, that I have not cried in front of you

every time I see you since you told me my dream school is off the table.

We can’t afford it.

I’ve known that for a while and yet I didn’t expect the blow

when you said that I couldn’t leave home,

that we could only afford for me to commute to a school

that I could’ve gotten into if my GPA was a full point lower

and if I’d never bothered to get a five on every since AP test I took.

You told me if I wanted it bad enough, we would make it happen.

I worked so hard, all to get out, of this place I've come to hate.

I did it all to get out of this house, this town full of people, so closed minded.

I’m sick of having a neighbor, that hasn’t spoken to my sister

since she brought home a black boyfriend.

I’m sick of having a neighbor, that runs his house like a training camp,

making his daughter train for basketball scholarships,

by locking her out of the house until she makes eight hundred baskets a day.

I’m sick of knowing that I don’t belong here, wanting to see the world beyond,

and being stuck seeing the same four walls again, another year they hold me captive.

There is no one left to meet, no one left to befriend,

because I’m so tired of befriending those who are nothing like me

and who only serve to make me feel more and more alone.

I am stuck in this town yet again, running in circles through my head,

feeling like I would rather be stuck in an asylum, or perhaps this place is my version

as it drives me closer to the edge. These voices in my head tell stories

of the places I can see, the people I can meet, of the life I can make.

If I leave, I can start new, remake myself and be happy with the woman in the mirror.

But these four walls reflect the girl I am now: scared of her own shadow and never able to grow.