The take-back of Ravenshire Prep {UNDER REVISION}

chapter 3

My mom tells me that I'm special. Different. Someone who will change the world and everyone on it. My dad tells me I will win some award someday. Maybe a Pulitzer prize or Maud Hart Lovelace. I knew that would probably never happen but I couldn't help wishing on every dandelion someday it would. And who knows? It just might.
I'd been writing poetry for a few years now, line after line, hidden away under my mattress. People believed that I had a gift for words and could melt the coldest of hearts with a few stanzas, so I was sent on a scholarship to a private school so I could perform my slam poetry at school competitions. It was the only time in a year I could step into the spotlight and matter more than a pretty face you would see in the hallways on your way to giving freshman swirlies or pranking the sub. I mattered for a few glorious minutes but then faded away into the sea of drifters.

But that was before.

Before she came into my life and raised her fist in the air and demanded social liberties. Before we sat on the top of the world and danced in the dark of the auditorium. Before she changed my life for the better by telling everyone.

She would take over my thoughts and be the subject of dreams, the revolutionary catalyst. I don't like to recall the days before I knew her. Everything just seemed like a story with no plot. A poem with no words. An ocean with no water. She saved me from drowning and took me to the surface where I learned how to breathe. So if you're reading this...you mean the world to me. And I love you for it.
I would meet you very soon, but for now I had kept to the shadows and shared my poetry online anonymously. I checked the replies on my latest post and scrolled down. I was getting more followers and a lot of useful ideas. I clicked into 'new poem' and started typing in the text box.

I have lived in the shadows for years now. Woke up everyday knowing that I am nothing like what I seem. That I am unlikeable and not good enough and something is wrong with me. But I'm not going to let that drag me down anymore. I will set the world on fire and rise from the ashes, a beautiful phoenix who has no fears or broken dreams. Or secrets they must keep. No nights lying awake wondering why they were meant this way and how they could change what never could.
I am the phoenix. And I am setting the world on fire.

I re-read the poem and hovered over the post button. Then I deleted it all with tears streaking down my face.