Sestina Day 26: South Craven

Wow! I got featured on the NaPoWriMo site! Hello, people I don’t actually know who are now reading this!

So, check out the link above to see today’s ridiculously complicated prompt. I did it and ended up with a heartfelt, autobiographical (self pitying, clunky) piece about my old secondary school. All real names.

That place always gave me a flavourless feeling:
Like overcooked pasta or one of those apples
Which looks sweet but inside it tastes of ennui.
Do you think I enjoyed it, my time at your school?
Mr Williams, Ms Watson,   Miss Wright,  Mrs  Wall?
Each day was like playing at Russian roulette

At the bus stop, I wait. Will the bus driver let
Me get on, or refuse to because he is feeling
Dissatisfied? Who knows? I lean on the wall
At the bus stop. Ignore everyone. eat an apple.
Pretend that it won’t be so awful at school,
And I switch off my mind to prepare for ennui.

It seems quite pretentious to call it ennui.
It was boredom, despair, and if ever I let
My guard down, it was physical pain: at that school
You weren’t punched where it showed, you got kicked in the feelings.
I bruised a lot, then, like an often dropped apple.
Felt trapped and advanced on: my back to the wall.

I just wasn’t cool enough. Over the wall
The whole busload of kids would sneak. Jackets on, we
Would evade capture, going to town for sour apples
And chuddy and kola kubes. Sometimes they let
Me come too, and I’d smile, temporarily feeling
Included, but that all stopped back up at school:

Because nobody talked to me much, up at school:
I’d be shunned or else shoved, face first, in to the wall
Told ‘get out of the way, you sad cow’. And my feelings
Were crushed a bit more, and replaced with ennui.
When you’re told that you’re nobody sometimes you let
Yourself think you deserve the jeers thrown like old apples

(In home economics, they threw actual apples)
At me.) In conclusion, what I learned at school
Was to keep my head down, not to speak, and to let
People trample all over me, and that Miss Wall
And the rest wouldn’t help. So in fact the ennui
Was my only defense. Learned to switch off my feelings.

But now I can let myself taste the sweet apples
Of life. Feeling that I’ve climbed over the wall
And escaped from that school and its sense of ennui.