Abandoned

Here in this school
of bullies, prom queens,
ordinary kids still dazed by life,
and tragedies, both true and
imagined by fourteen-year-old girls,
Abandoned is the saddest story.

Here in this school
where we struggle with
grades and prom night,
illiteracy, the big game,
pregnant teens and faculty evaluations
his head with his floppy clean hair
is filled with where to sleep tonight.

Here in this school
where bells tell us when to
switch from chemistry to symbolism in
Shakespeare, forty-one minutes
to pack it neatly into uninterested minds
behind his shy, scraggly smile
he is learning about existence in a vacuum.

Here in this school
homeless, but not aimless,
he studies hard the art of absence
practicing how to disappear.
He is barely visible by the time we
remember to teach him this:
Every Body gets a space in this world
and people to notice them in it.