I don’t have butterflies in my stomach;
I have skydivers in my stomach
And they forgot their parachutes
And they are plummeting to the ground
At an accelerating speed
They scream in the form of sweaty palms
And quivering lips

I feel stares burning into the back of my skull
Crippling me
Disintegrating me
Tearing me apart
My heart is pounding like a dubstep concert
Can everyone hear it?
I turn to look behind myself, paranoid
No one is looking at me; everyone is busy writing their tests
Breathe in, breathe out, you’re being paranoid
How is it that I stood outside the class
As a house of cards;
Put together, taken long hours to assemble,
But once I entered class
My cards came caving in
And fluttering to the ground?

Thirty minutes into the test...
I need a drink of water
But my stomach does back flips at the thought
Of everyone looking at me when I get up
What if the teacher asks where I’m going?
What if I stumble?
Stutter?
Screw up or sputter?
The thought of possible humiliation
Has my feet bound down to the ground without chains
My throat is as dry as the Sahara, but I can deal with it
I would rather face thirty more minutes of dehydration
Than thirty eyes trained on me

Two days later...
I got my results for the test
And I didn’t do my best
The teacher asked me why,
Genuinely distressed
And what else could I say
Except “I didn’t study, I guess”?

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder

I count thirty students in the class out of habit
Good, that number is even
Balanced
Dividable
I cannot help but look around the class
I look at the words slanted lazily on the chalkboard
The crooked desks cluttered around the class
Oh, those crooked desks
Have put my sanity on the brink
I need to go over and straighten them out
But I cannot get up in the middle of a test

You see, when there are crooked, chaotic, cluttered desks on the loose
Staying put in my seat is difficult;
My fingers are trembling like a person with Parkinson’s
My feet are drumming on the floor in synchrony
Tapping out a morse-coded symphony
I need to distract myself, so I look down at my desk

I have eight pens, organized in groups of two
Colour coordinated
Facing each other, perfectly aligned
Kind of like soldiers, except
My soldiers are not allowed to move from their positions
“Stop playing games, Miss Fields. Write your test”
Games? This is not a game, teacher
This is not some board game I can fold up and put aside when I get tired of it
This is a real life problem I have to deal with
I try to divert my mind from my anger
And focus on the test in front of me

Forty-five minutes into the test...
The sum of 9 x 17
I know the answer: 153
But that is not an even number
I feel the claws my natural instinct overpower my mind
As I write three even digits: 246
That is the wrong answer
But I cannot help but look down at the digits and smile

Two days later...
I got my results for the test
And I didn’t do my best
The teacher asked me why,
Genuinely distressed,
And what else could I say
Except “I didn’t study, I guess”?

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Dyslexia

There is a serious glitch in my brain
That cannot be fixed with a screw driver or wrench
It simply cannot be fine-tuned
To function ordinarily
I am sitting in my seat, shooting daggers at a blank page
Words and numbers are too hard to
Formulate
Punctuate
Enunciate
The letters and numbers and figures
Made up of varying sticks and circles and dots
Cruising around the page at a hundred miles per hour
While my brain is struggling to follow behind, huffing out of breath
I am left behind in the dust
Befuddled and left alone to try to catch up on my own
No matter how intelligent I am
I cannot read and write the same as everyone else
Two days later...
I got my results for the test
And I didn’t do my best
The teacher asked me why,
Genuinely distressed,
And what else could I say
Except “I didn’t study, I guess”?