Rebekah

A Poem about Bullying

She was tall and skinny; lanky really

Could have been pretty, given the right

Clothes, hair and makeup; to be honest

I had to pull out my high school year book

To remember what she looked like

She was not smart, she was

An eighteen year old sophomore

I always wanted to ask if it hurt

When her body twitched uncontrollably

She most likely had a mild form of Tourette’s

But her family could not afford

Proper medical treatment so her head

Would accidentally bang against the desk

 

I remember Spanish class being one

Of the few places I actually felt cool in high school

I sat at my desk trying to conjugate verbs

Looking behind me and watching her head convulse

I mocked what she couldn’t control

She threw her pen hitting me in the head

I picked it up, shoved it in my bag

Told her she was a retard and mimicked

Her shaking body; I remember

Watching her hold back tears

I may have humiliated her

But she never let me take her pride

 

On the high school popularity scale

I was somewhere towards the bottom

But she was even lower than me

Somehow that gave me the right

To throw stones through her window of self-worth

And now I write about being a victim of bullying

My poems are hypocrites, it’s true

I cried listening to Jamie Nobozny’s story

I screamed in outrage the day

An 11 year old body was found

Dangling from his third-floor railing

Fell to the floor when I found out

Tyler Clementi’s bully will serve jail time

I am appalled when I see schools

Doing nothing to make sure children are safe

I remember feeling bad about what I had done

I will never have the opportunity to apologize

 

When her car slid under the trailer of the truck

I want to know if her life flashed before her eyes

I want to know if her last thought was happy

I want to know if her death was truly an accident

Or if she found a way to leave this world

Without writing her loved ones a poem

When they pulled pieces of her body

From the wreckage; the only way to identify her

Was the license plate; her father was

On the ambulance driving to the crash site

They had to pull his thrashing body from the vehicle

Her father was a ghost wailing for his dead daughter

 

This is the hardest poem I have ever written

The thought that I may have hurt

Someone so bad they would want to take their life

Has been consuming me for weeks

My chest tightens with shame and guilt

I can feel the tar in my fingertips

All I want to do is explode

Go ahead judge me; go ahead break me

We all have things we regret

And the ones who don’t

Are either lying or too blind

To see the ones they stabbed willingly

We focus on our own pain

Failing to mention the ones

We wrapped in barbed wire

And pushed down a hill

The ones we shove aside

To make room for shinier skin

 

Her face was so mangled, the mortician

Sculpted a new one from wax

They pulled shrapnel from her arms

The day they laid her casket in the ground

School was canceled, I didn’t attend the service

But watched one by one as people

Who treated her worse than I

Walked out on their education

Like their sins would somehow vanish

And tonight, as I sit in my parents’ house

I wish I had done the same

The yearning to change

What has already been done

Strips my stomach clean

 

If she were alive

Would I feel remorse?

Would I want to face her?

I heard she got married

I heard she was thinking

About starting her own family

I heard she was finally happy

These thoughts tear through me

As I stand over her grave

I place white tulips on the stone

Whisper “I am so sorry for the way I treated you”

A gentle breeze makes the hair

On my arms stand upright

I like to think she heard me 

Author's Note

Reviews

[afra]

aawwwwwww it was really cute ....more like a story in a poem ..good job

[Lucas Jay]

Yeah, I think I'm more of a storyteller than a poet some days!

[afra]

yeh ..but its cool

[Lucas Jay]

well thank you!

[afra]

welcome