Teacher

I remember,

When I sat in their desks,

The allure and horror over future pubes,

And my questions,

Mocked as naïve,

About why there had to be jobs, and grades, and government.

I remember the terror that my childhood would perish

Upon the altar of a civilization that people millennia ago invented,

Rascals, dullards, and prophets long dead,

No longer accountable to their bewildered descendants.

I remember it all now

As I gaze upon their troubled faces,

Wordlessly begging to understand a world not of their making

Any more than it was of mine.

I am mortified that I am now the priest in the pulpit.

I am now the indoctrinator,

The bureaucrat,

The enemy …

Working to fit them into the same obscene molds

I and my compeers were,

Because that's the way it's always been,

And because my race is ovine and unworthy,

That's the way it seems things shall ever be.