This is the last poem for Poetry Month! After today I’ll be going back to one Madroots: Memoir post each week, plus posts on other things again.

This poem describes a life-long experience of not feeling like I belong anywhere. It is set during the time I was in Junior High school. I did well academically, but under the surface, and despite that fact that I had a few friends, I was struggling.

The poem is meant to LOOK like a periphery around “normal” family experiences. You tell me, does that structure work? Not that “normal” is really a thing. But to my teenage eyes and heart of the time, I thought it was.