these are the kids who fight to
write
against the world.
it can be crooked letters of imperfect
handwriting that stand sharp against
coffee-stained, wrinkled pieces of
ripped binder paper,
or romantic scrawls on the trunk of a city sapling
still supported by rotting wooden sticks—
someday they will fit in (somewhere), but
today they will jot their stories in
broken words on tattered scraps because
they know that it doesn’t have to be true,
just real.