the brimming success of general education

They say the letter doesn’t define you,
Who you are,
What you’re like,
Where you’ll go

They say not to beat yourself up over the letter but through these years:

I’ve grounded myself to the pavement,
Fist to face until my whole face is bloody and
The hands I use to write go purple
And my heart that beats with motivation goes cold

Your smile doesn’t matter,
Because the curve of your lips forms a C
The way your tears fall to the ground,
It shows the direction of your future

It’s easy to say

To pick yourself up and raise your head high,
To stand up and face what you cannot fight,
And take the punches until you cannot breathe
With pride on your shoulders

But as the clouds in the sky become pages of white,
The gold brass in my heart tints dull
And the white spark in my eyes goes gray,
Declaring three words that bring an itch:

I give up

And when everyone wears gowns after four years,
You sit in the audience with a balled fist,
With no yellowed paper in your hand
To say you’ve made it, too

When your hard work dusts with time,
Your future becomes buried in dust,
As the stories of your life
Are buried under the dirt of your home,

Just as where your body lays.

It’s too late to stand up once you’ve laid down for the final time