I hated the way my cursive sagged when I got tired, how the loops of the letters became either bloated bags or sad smudges. I hated the milky skin of correction fluid, how it clung to the tip of my pen and I had to pull it off with my fingers. I hated when my papers couldn’t fit perfectly i eraser dust stuck to the page instead of blowing off. I hated the crumbly detritus at the bottom of my pack, the leaves of paper and pine needles of lead and twigs of snapped-off pencil clutches and pebbles of pink-black rubber. I hated my broken protractor, even though there was no point in fixing it once I got to high school. I hated that fifteen-year-old me picked “Incunabulum6” as my College Board username, not realizing that I’d never be able to change it. I hated that Google Docs were always, always set to 11 pt Arial when the only proper font is 12 pt Times New Roman. I hated how my planners were filled with scratches and scribbles. I hated that I lost my copy of The Things They Carried. I hated how curled up I was, a moth refusing to emerge from the cocoon. I couldn’t remember the exact moment when my messy multilegged self had decided to hang dormant, to be blown but never detached by the wind. Now, even my messiness was neat the eraser or a flip of the page.
Kat Falacienski is a student at Colorado College. She has been published in Teens Resist, Affinity Magazine, the