Poem: To My Junior Class

To My Junior Class

Fabiana Peña Feeney

Temporarily we reside in a location unknown

Not wanting to be traced down.

Afraid of the brute reality that undeniably lies ahead

Lies ahead of me, ahead of us.

We have stood together hand in hand for thirteen years,

Or so it seems.

The day that we are forced to let go rapidly

scurries its way to our present

Like a bike with no breaks moving in a vertical manner

 down a steep jagged mountain.

What should I be?

Who should I work hard to become?

These questions become our tongue twisters

As we have a hard time verbalizing them

 But they appear to be comfortably living

as one of our permanent thoughts.

Am I good enough for this? How far?

How far can my middle finger reach when

 I stretch out my arm; it feels like it could just detach

from my shoulder and levitate high up and

never stop rising. But is it high enough?

Low enough that it means nothing at all?

No one will take it seriously, not even I, will believe my own finger?

And what happens when I fill in the first miniature

 bubble with that lead #2. What will happen then?

 Because of this bubble will my future in some way

make a shift? Will it change?

Our lives have been reduced to a series of questions.

Every sentence I write uncertainty of whether a

question mark should go at the end is present.

Some things I am sure of but more that I am not?

I keep repeating “One test does not define my life.”

but then again, how many do? At the end of this fourteen-year

odyssey numbers will stand firmly besides our names.

These numbers will be part of who we are.

The reality is, my dear juniors,

that the numbers that have been added, subtracted,

divided and multiplied through the years in our school

 will make a lot of decisions for us.

And that makes me uneasy…

someone, actually something; making decisions for us.

But these numbers are ours.

We made them and added them and everything in between.

 I know that I have to assume responsibility

and I will do just that

 but the nerves are talking, the uncertainty

and the million of questions on my mind.

My dear junior class, I am afraid

 we are all rabbits in a forest full of wild cats.

  We have nowhere to go just yet.

No one seems to understand us,

when we try to utter the wretched tongue twisters

 we work so hard to forget.