What Did You Learn at School Today?

 

To me it came as a surprise

when they surrounded me

and took me to the place arranged,

and then she pounded me.

I didn’t know what I had done.

My classmates clearly knew,

and clearly thought the thing she did

was honourable to do.

She stood there waiting, poised and grim.

Someone removed my coat

and then stepped back. I gaped at her.

She punched me in the throat.

I didn’t see it coming, no.

Did not retaliate.

She got my larynx, took my breath.

My voice came back too late.

She met my silence with contempt,

as if I had intent.

They asked her, ‘Are you satisfied?’

‘I am,’ she said, and went.

‘Why didn’t you fight back?’ they asked.

I choked and coughed, then spoke.

‘What was that about? It hurt!’

They laughed. ‘That little poke?’

She never spoke to me again.

My crime was not explained.

I kept myself to myself

the few months that remained.

I was new there, from afar.

So was I just uncool?

I learned I was a stranger, in

my final year of school.

NaPoWriMo 2025, Day Nineteen

Prompt: to write in ballad style, telling a story – perhaps of a crime or tragedy.  I didn't want to go that dark; instead, memory dredged up this mysterious unpleasantness .