I come home with these afflicting wounds

They’re everywhere down my arms on my back, my face

I try to heal

I find a different route home

But every time I heal or plan a new path they just find me again

With their fists and mouths

 

Everyone says that sticks and stone will break my bones

But words will never hurt me

Well let me clarify that this saying is the biggest lie to in society

I have broken bones

I have gotten cut

I have been bruised

 

But let me tell you my friend

Well I don’t have any of those

Just let me tell you that I have been called names

Horrible, nasty name like the ones junior high kids scratch into playground equipment

Those are the things that hurt most

 

The names that make you want to lock yourself in your room and never leave

The names that make you feel like moving away from there

I don’t know where but anywhere where my name has never been heard

Like maybe Australia

 

There are names I’ve been called that make me want to mope around depressed

I try to report to a teacher but you know

The teachers always say they will help you in these situations

But that's never the case

When I tell they the pain I’m going through

They just say to walk it off or to ignore it

But you know what

They’re just like the kids at school

Hypocrites

Saying they’ll stop it when the next day they come back and beat you again

 

And when my mom asks me what's wrong I lie and say nothing

Because you know, I don’t want her to worry

And she keeps urging me like an interrogator saying

Whats going on sweetie whats the matter

And I keep saying nothing

Nothing

Nothing

And it feels like the biggest lie I have told anyone in my entire life

Cause there is something wrong

Everything is wrong

First it’s the bullies

They start out teasing

Then they start name calling

Then they start pushing

Then they start punching then they start full on attacking

 

Then the teachers after I had enough of going home with bruises and scars

I tell them

They don’t listen

I show them the wounds one my arms

They don’t seem to care one bit

Then you get to that one moment where you show her that they tore up your math book

And she flips out

Not at the students but at you

She yells at you screaming

How dare you deface school property and making you pay for the book

 

So then instead of the kids just beating me and calling me names

They start tearing my homework

Or copying it down for theirs then tearing it up

When they get a wrong answer they decide to give me a little extra beating

To teach me to get it right next time

 

Or maybe it's just me

People tell me it’s me

They tell me I should believe them

That they’re speaking truth

But I don’t know how to believe them

They tell me to do horrible things no one should ever do to themselves

They tell me to go back to where I came from

To go die in a hole

To just stop existing

To stop breathing

They sometimes get technical and say

Stop inhaling air through your nose and exhaling it out through your mouth

So I inhale through my mouth and exhale through my nose

Then they punch me more

Harder

So hard

That I fianaly start believing the things they say

That I'm nothing but a mistake that someone tried to get rid of but they couldn't

 

So finally when my mom finally reads my journal that has all the bad things anyone ever did to me

She decides to have no more of it

She tells me to tell the principal

I tell her I have but he just does the things all the other teachers have done

So she decides to homeschool me

But that doesn’t work either

Instead the kids just stay outside my house hiding in the bushes

Waiting for me to go out

So I stop leaving the house

And once when I got enough courage to they come after me and beat me to the ground

Leaving me lying there, unconscious

 

My mom sees and rushes me to the hospital

They tell me I will never be the same

That the beatings they gave me had clogged my brain

Now the kids would just make fun of me more

They’d call me stupid because that's what they made me

A dumb piece of flesh that should never have existed

 

So mom moved herself and I to the place in the country where we could be as far away from Maine as we could be in this land mass that I live on  

That no one who cares about me

I felt like a prisoner on my own turf

So my mom makes me leave my turf

She takes me to California

Two thousand eight hundred miles from my home

 

This is what bullying does

 

It takes people from their homes

And plops them in the middle of no-where, California

 

Keeps them from where they need to be

This

Must

Change

 

I can’t deal with it anymore

 

We need to stop it

Lets

Change

The

World