Kindergarten Lesson Plan
You do not have to have a handmade heart
to put on every desk in February.
You do not have to subject yourself
to something less than empty
when you look on your desk to find
a single box of chalky fake writing hearts
or nothing at all.
You do not have to invite thirty people
into your small house on your birthday.
Your guilt will not be louder
than their voices bouncing through
your sanctuary, their careless footsteps.
Pick a few, or one, that really matters
or no one at all. Enjoy yourself
the way they do not know how to enjoy you.
You do not have to apologize
when you finally look someone else in the eye
and say, you cannot have this.
This is mine and I won’t give it to you.
Even when they call you names.
Even when they run crying for sympathy
beseeching an authority that does not care
to justify their selfishness.
Even when you are told it is wrong
to pull back when uncaring hands
try to move you. Even when
you are told to apologize for refusing
to see selflessness as a virtue,
for knowing what you do not have to do.
They will not know what to do
with a creature like you.
You stun them with radiant shamelessness
until they retreat into their own wounds,
want you to apologize
for refusing to carve spaces into yourself
big enough to carry someone else’s fear.
Go home, alone.
Decorate your room with hearts.
Hold yourself the way no one else knows how.