One Shot: Skipping Stones, Chained around Your Ankles

We'd sling stones hoping for a
kiss kiss kiss skip across
the surface but some were worth less
zing~plop, the water swallowing
them up, slipping down to
the bottom

& growing up around water
i never really thought about drowning,
until the day i was clowning around
with one of my parents friends
in the deep end and caught him with my
foot on his way up after a dive and he
held me under to teach me a lesson,
and see the fear in my eyes?

but that day, as my lungs
ached for air, whistling screams
of each cilia, fingers grasping
for purchase as my world
faded to blackness...this is
the moment i understood...watching
someone i knew and trusted, doing
what he thought best for me,
hold me under, then i knew
exactly what it felt like...

to be in your first year of high school
and know how to catch a football (well
kinda) but look at a page of words and
not make sense of them, passed on because,
no one knows what to do with you and if
they accept your diagnosis they have to
allocate money for an aide out of an
already cut the budget where teachers
have to pay for pencils so kids can
fill in the bubbles on the standardized
tests that determine if their school gets
to stay open, or they get to keep their
job, out of their barely above welfare wages,

leaving this boy stolen from
feeling dumb, stupid, and
worth less like that damn rock
on the bottom of the lake
silently choked out by
the ones that are supposed
to care for him, but all they are
concerned with is skipping rocks
across the surface.

Yo! It's One Shot Wednesday. Time to cut the poetic wax and spin it for the blogoverse. What have you got to say? Write a poem, come join us. I will be hosting tonight, 5 PM EST...be there. Smiles.

And if you are a storyteller, yet not necessarily poetic, we are having a fun writing experiment over at One Stop right now until the doors open for OSW.