A Year 2 kid got bullied into cutting his own tongue yesterday. can't even bear to look at his picture people shared. since when do the little ones know how to commit such heinous act?
am extremely touched by this dance and the spoken poetry today. say NO to bullying!

To This Day

by Shane Koyzcan

When I was a kid
I used to think that pork chops and karate chops
were the same thing
I thought they were both pork chops
and because my grandmother thought it was cute
and because they were my favourite
she let me keep doing it

not really a big deal

one day
before I realized fat kids are not designed to climb trees
I fell out of a tree
and bruised the right side of my body

I didn’t want to tell my grandmother about it
because I was afraid I’d get in trouble
for playing somewhere that I shouldn’t have been

a few days later the gym teacher noticed the bruise
and I got sent to the principal’s office
from there I was sent to another small room
with a really nice lady
who asked me all kinds of questions
about my life at home

I saw no reason to lie
as far as I was concerned
life was pretty good
I told her “whenever I’m sad
my grandmother gives me karate chops”

this led to a full scale investigation
and I was removed from the house for three days
until they finally decided to ask how I got the bruises

news of this silly little story quickly spread through the school
and I earned my first nickname

pork chop

to this day
I hate pork chops

I’m not the only kid
who grew up this way
surrounded by people who used to say
that rhyme about sticks and stones
as if broken bones
hurt more than the names we got called
and we got called them all
so we grew up believing no one
would ever fall in love with us
that we’d be lonely forever
that we’d never meet someone
to make us feel like the sun
was something they built for us
in their tool shed
so broken heart strings bled the blues
as we tried to empty ourselves
so we would feel nothing
don’t tell me that hurts less than a broken bone
that an ingrown life
is something surgeons can cut away
that there’s no way for it to metastasize

it does

she was eight years old
our first day of grade three
when she got called ugly
we both got moved to the back of the class
so we would stop get bombarded by spit balls
but the school halls were a battleground
where we found ourselves outnumbered day after wretched day
we used to stay inside for recess
because outside was worse
outside we’d have to rehearse running away
or learn to stay still like statues giving no clues that we were there
in grade five they taped a sign to her desk
that read beware of dog

to this day
despite a loving husband
she doesn’t think she’s beautiful
because of a birthmark
that takes up a little less than half of her face
kids used to say she looks like a wrong answer
that someone tried to erase
but couldn’t quite get the job done
and they’ll never understand
that she’s raising two kids
whose definition of beauty
begins with the word mom
because they see her heart
before they see her skin
that she’s only ever always been amazing

he
was a broken branch
grafted onto a different family tree
adopted
but not because his parents opted for a different destiny
he was three when he became a mixed drink
of one part left alone
and two parts tragedy
started therapy in 8th grade
had a personality made up of tests and pills
lived like the uphills were mountains
and the downhills were cliffs
four fifths suicidal
a tidal wave of anti depressants
and an adolescence of being called popper
one part because of the pills
and ninety nine parts because of the cruelty
he tried to kill himself in grade ten
when a kid who still had his mom and dad
had the audacity to tell him “get over it” as if depression
is something that can be remedied
by any of the contents found in a first aid kit

to this day
he is a stick on TNT lit from both ends
could describe to you in detail the way the sky bends
in the moments before it’s about to fall
and despite an army of friends
who all call him an inspiration
he remains a conversation piece between people
who can’t understand
sometimes becoming drug free
has less to do with addiction
and more to do with sanity

we weren’t the only kids who grew up this way
to this day
kids are still being called names
the classics were
hey stupid
hey spaz
seems like each school has an arsenal of names
getting updated every year
and if a kid breaks in a school
and no one around chooses to hear
do they make a sound?
are they just the background noise
of a soundtrack stuck on repeat
when people say things like
kids can be cruel?
every school was a big top circus tent
and the pecking order went
from acrobats to lion tamers
from clowns to carnies
all of these were miles ahead of who we were
we were freaks
lobster claw boys and bearded ladies
oddities
juggling depression and loneliness playing solitaire spin the bottle
trying to kiss the wounded parts of ourselves and heal
but at night
while the others slept
we kept walking the tightrope
it was practice
and yeah
some of us fell

but I want to tell them
that all of this shit
is just debris
leftover when we finally decide to smash all the things we thought
we used to be
and if you can’t see anything beautiful about yourself
get a better mirror
look a little closer
stare a little longer
because there’s something inside you
that made you keep trying
despite everyone who told you to quit
you built a cast around your broken heart
and signed it yourself
you signed it
“they were wrong”
because maybe you didn’t belong to a group or a click
maybe they decided to pick you last for basketball or everything
maybe you used to bring bruises and broken teeth
to show and tell but never told
because how can you hold your ground
if everyone around you wants to bury you beneath it
you have to believe that they were wrong

they have to be wrong

why else would we still be here?
we grew up learning to cheer on the underdog
because we see ourselves in them
we stem from a root planted in the belief
that we are not what we were called we are not abandoned cars stalled out and sitting empty on a highway
and if in some way we are
don’t worry
we only got out to walk and get gas
we are graduating members from the class of
fuck off we made it
not the faded echoes of voices crying out
names will never hurt me

of course
they did

but our lives will only ever always
continue to be
a balancing act
that has less to do with pain

Shrinking Women

Across from me at the kitchen table, my mother smiles over red wine that she drinks out of a measuring glass.
She says she doesn’t deprive herself,
but I’ve learned to find nuance in every movement of her fork.
In every crinkle in her brow as she offers me the uneaten pieces on her plate.
I’ve realized she only eats dinner when I suggest it.
I wonder what she does when I’m not there to do so.

Maybe this is why my house feels bigger each time I return; it’s proportional.
As she shrinks the space around her seems increasingly vast.
She wanes while my father waxes. His stomach has grown round with wine, late nights, oysters, poetry. A new girlfriend who was overweight as a teenager, but my dad reports that now she’s “crazy about fruit.”

It was the same with his parents;
as my grandmother became frail and angular her husband swelled to red round cheeks, round stomach
and I wonder if my lineage is one of women shrinking
making space for the entrance of men into their lives
not knowing how to fill it back up once they leave.

I have been taught accommodation.
My brother never thinks before he speaks.
I have been taught to filter.
“How can anyone have a relationship to food?” He asks, laughing, as I eat the black bean soup I chose for its lack of carbs.
I want to tell say: we come from difference, Jonas,
you have been taught to grow out
I have been taught to grow in
you learned from our father how to emit, how to produce, to roll each thought off your tongue with confidence, you used to lose your voice every other week from shouting so much
I learned to absorb
I took lessons from our mother in creating space around myself
I learned to read the knots in her forehead while the guys went out for oysters
and I never meant to replicate her, but
spend enough time sitting across from someone and you pick up their habits

that’s why women in my family have been shrinking for decades.
We all learned it from each other, the way each generation taught the next how to knit
weaving silence in between the threads
which I can still feel as I walk through this ever-growing house,
skin itching,
picking up all the habits my mother has unwittingly dropped like bits of crumpled paper from her pocket on her countless trips from bedroom to kitchen to bedroom again,
Nights I hear her creep down to eat plain yogurt in the dark, a fugitive stealing calories to which she does not feel entitled.
Deciding how many bites is too many
How much space she deserves to occupy.

Watching the struggle I either mimic or hate her,
And I don’t want to do either anymore
but the burden of this house has followed me across the country
I asked five questions in genetics class today and all of them started with the word “sorry”.
I don’t know the requirements for the sociology major because I spent the entire meeting deciding whether or not I could have another piece of pizza
a circular obsession I never wanted but

inheritance is accidental
still staring at me with wine-stained lips from across the kitchen table.

– Lily Myers

-credit:Button Poetry

sharing my latest poetry craze. one word- MIND BLOWING.

A Letter to SarahContemplating Super Powers
If I could regenerate any damage to my body,
I would double back flip belly flop
off the tallest building I could find.
I would make you watch.
Would not tell you it won’t kill me.
When my body hits the ground,
turns bone to dust,
when blood splatters across your face
there will be a moment
where your heart stops,
where the belly drops out of your everything.
I would calmly walk over to you and say
yeah, ever since you killed yourself
it’s been like that for all of us
All of the time.

If I could fly,
I would take you so high so fast
you would be terrified that wind resistance
alone would rip you out of my arms.
Don’t worry.
I would hold onto you with a strength
born of fear and longing.
When your vision starts to go black
I will whisper-
If you’d only told us something was wrong
we could’ve held you
told you we loved you.
We could have helped.
I would stop,
as the oxygen floods back into your brain
everything would come into focus.
I would tell you yeah,
every day was like that with you,
you always made sure
we saw the glory in front of us.

If I could read people’s minds,
I would not invade your privacy.
Instead I would eavesdrop on every passerby.
tattoo my arms with all the compliments,
every wow she’s good looking,
every I wish I was that confident.
Meeting all of your ex-lovers
would turn my chest and back into a masterpiece.
Record every thing they should have told you
every how could I have ever let her get away,
every she was the best thing that ever happened to me.
My legs would turn into patchwork with hatch marks
for every time I wished you were still with me.
It would not take a full day
to cover this body with all of the nice things people
didn’t think you needed to hear.

If I could travel through time,
I would go back to the moment
before it was too late.
Right before the moment you wrote a suicide note
that started Dear Jared:
I’m doing this now because I know you will be the one to find me
because of all of my friends I think you’re the one
whose strong enough to take it.
What made you think I was strong enough to take this?
I would go back to the moment before you
became the reason I don’t read letters
without having someone else proof read them first,

If I could project my thoughts in another’s heard,
even knowing it could never have saved you.
But believing maybe it could have saved me,
you would never have doubted,
even for an instant,
that you were loved.

Sarah’s Reply
For the man who found me after my suicide
Dear Jared:

I wish I could say I was sorry for what I did,
or at least for making you be the one to find me,
but I just don’t see the point in lying anymore.
I only have one question left,
Why is it taking you so long to join me.
Don’t you know why you are
so comfortable on Halloween
or during monster movies,
It’s because you see yourself in them.

Jared, I have never known some one
more like a zombie than you.
I don’t mean a B-rate special effects zombie
covered in fake blood moaning about brains.
I mean, how many times have you found yourself
shuffling slowly forward in search of something
you don’t even understand anymore.
Refusing to let anything stop you
wouldn’t it be easier
one single shot.

If you were a vampire, Jared,
would you even notice the difference.
When was the last time you looked in a mirror
and saw something you recognized.
They say that a day in the arms of a loved one
can feel like an instant.
The opposite is also true.
How long have these 23 years dragged on.
Does it feel like a lifetime yet,
Do you feel immortal yet.

You have always been my Frankenstein, Jared
built out of spare parts
by a half mad doctor
more concerned with creating life
than potential consequences.
He gave you up for adoption.
You are so strong, Jared,
able to bear with your stitched together muscles
and your stitched together heart
more than any man was meant to.

When the villagers came
with pitchfork and torch for Frankenstein,
he ran. Why didn’t you run Jared?
Why did you stay, why weren’t you strong enough
To just let them burn.

You used to call me your guardian angel.
I think this is true now
our halos are forged of what makes us holy.
Mine is made of tiny spinning images of your face Jared.
of your belief in me.
My wings are formed out of every letter you wrote me
Even the one I pretended not to read.
You were always my second family Jared
Let me return the favor.
Follow my voice,
let me hold you like you used to hold me,

I am waiting.
I know it’s selfish,
but I hope it doesn’t take too long
I miss you.

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