this wasn't in the handbook

I don’t say:

You broke me a little today.

With your laughter like knives,

With your eyes like I’m something stuck to the bottom of your shoe.

I swallowed the sting,

turned it into a lesson plan,

and you still didn’t turn it in.

I don’t say:

I used to love this.

Used to dream in chalk dust and paperbacks and poetry,

used to believe I was the architect of something wonderful —

a bridge, a flame,

a place where you could become.

Now I just build walls to survive the hour.

I don’t say:

The way you talk to each other

turns my stomach like sour milk.

Like kindness is extinct in your language,

a dead dialect you never learned to speak.

You love like it’s a scam

hurt like it’s habit

Like the world burned through your softness

before you ever had a chance to use it.

and I wonder what this world has taken from you

to make cruelty your mother tongue.

I don’t say:

I go home heavy with all the words I didn’t scream.

venom pools in my chest,

and I catch myself

hating you.

Not just the way you act and speak — you.

And I don’t know how to clean that out.

I don’t say:

I’ve imagined quitting more times than I’ve imagined you succeeding.

And that’s not who I wanted to be.

But it’s who I am now —

cynical, sharp-edged,

watching the clock more than your eyes.

I don’t say:

I’ve flinched when your name lit up my inbox.

Not out of concern —

but because I wanted nothing to do with you,

with your chaos, your cruelty,

your effortless ability to make me feel worthless.

I don’t say:

I’ve carried your voice home,

repeating your insults like a broken prayer

until I believed them.

Until I started snarling at my own reflection

the way you snarl at me.

I don’t say:

Sometimes I think I’m too damaged to teach.

That I’ve let the bitterness root too deep.

That I am no longer safe for soft hearts.

That I’m too tired to fake warmth

for those who set fires for fun.

I don’t say:

Some nights, I dream of a job where no one needs me.

Where I can be invisible.

Where I don’t have to care.

Because caring has become

a wound I pick open

just to prove I’m still alive.

I don’t say:

Some of you are worth everything.

Your quiet kindness,

your spark.

You are the reason I drag myself back here.

You’re rare.

You matter.

And it feels like a pulse of something sacred

still beating under all this wreckage.

But I don’t say that either.

Because it hurts too much

to feel that hope

in a room full of blades.