cite your sources.

I spent years in a classroom

learning how to pretend my thoughts were someone else's

learning how to quote Plato instead of

that one time i spent too long looking at the sunrise and suddenly the whole world made sense

learning how to trim ideas down,

too big to cram into textbook margins or 12 pt times new roman (double spaced).

i shoved ideas too huge for the open sky

into 800 words, 3 pages single sided

and i learned to pretend like what i was saying still mattered.

tell the story of the whole world

in ten minutes

anything over 9 minutes 59 seconds doesn't count.

you are only worth how quickly you can talk

before losing your breath

how many words in the lines

artful cursive, before your hands start to cramp and the clock runs out

and anything you had left to say fades out of existence

as if it had no value outside an A4 page, college ruled and stained with expectation