give me those dream school stories

the made it in on the first portfolio stories

gets to attend their top choice stories

give me a three course dinner of every starry eyed student and their weakened spirits and broken expectations put on a platter because i’m begrudging and starving

i need to scrape off the burnt side of those dream-now-disillusioned school stories

and swallow those charred bits whole for my own sick satisfaction

i need those prestige ain’t everything stories so i can douse the bitterness of my own failures with a cocktail of cracked glass and warped perspectives of a school that didn’t live up to its legend. i want a thick slab of their student debt wet with fat and stressed-out tears. i want dorm horror stories stuffed with roommate brawls and strangled student communities. i want monstrous teachers served on the side so i can bite into their three hour lectures

i want to wipe my grubby face with their diplomas and cap tassels

i want 100% premium regret and empty smiles in graduation photos and the same looming uncertainty of what the future holds even after attending a school for four years to-go, wrapped up, packaged, and put in my hands with the bill

i want their experience to be indigestible like the shame and disappointment festering in the lining of my stomach and eroding gaping holes that poisons and destroys me when i’m reminded of my own personal shortcomings

give me those dream school stories

so i can shove them in my mouth

chew, nearly swallow

and spit back out at my own reflection