Down at her feet

She looks at the street

All cracked and weathered

From all its years being beat

Beat by the cars

And beat by the rain

Sometimes she feels

Just like that street

Broken and buckled

Riddled with holes

Holes in her heart

And holes in her brain

Instead of her safe suburban home

She walks right past it

All alone

She walks past her school

Past the park

Just past the trees

And sits in a clearing

Where she can just

Be

In that clearing she leans on a tree

She takes out a notebook from her bag

And writes and writes

Till she feels less bad

“I am sick of being ignored”

“I am sick of being overlooked”

“I feel like a background character,

in someone else’s book”

She looks at the words

That she has just written

And realized that for the first time

She is not trying to hide

She is sick of waiting

For this deadbeat town

To wake up and realize

That she is meant for more

Than people think

She takes out her pocket knife

And carves into the tree

“Goodbye little town

Goodbye little life

Goodbye to those

Who will never understand

That sometimes to be you

You have to give up who you’ve been”

“Lots of love, Sam”