Boards well worn
Green and black ones
Sticky, chalky fingers 
Eating sticks on a dare
School bells are suggestions
Impossible to pause the latest
Discussions on cartoons and toys
Licks handed out for truancy 
Talk back to teachers at your peril 
Parents and all the school will hear 

Friends come and go with the new year
Rolled up Catholic school skirts
Hem lines that flirt with boys
Missed opportunity gym bloomers
At lunch time and after school
We explore makeup and men
Gawking at toys in Yonge St. sex shops
In love with the geography teacher
Classrooms are for sampling fantasies
We lived according to Cosmo and Seventeen

Consumed with 
A different kind of acceptance
Anxiety inducing letters 
Yet, excitedly we wait for mail
Counsellors offer guidance 
Financially, uni doesn't allow for discovery
I wasted a year randomly
Going where curiosity took me
Without enough time, so many
Books screaming to be read

On Free Choice of the Will
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
Black Skin, White Masks
The Portable Nietzsche
Rousseau's Political Writings
Selections from the Prison Notebooks
Civil Disobedience in Focus
The Wretched of the Earth
To die for the People
Soul searching over pizza and soda

Living according to learning
Recognizing the rarity of freedom
Enjoying toys, cartoons and reading
Now and then a Cosmo indulgence
Late night conversations with self
Where answers elude neat packaging
An annoying circumstance nevertheless
I write according to emotions and 
The manifestations of feeling and
Through frequent kudoclasms

Thank you, Laura and the dVerse team.

This likely isn’t the truest of cadralors but whatever. 🫠 The prompt inspired the poem, call it what you like.

Photo by Blend Archive on Unsplash

© 2026 Ociola Samantha Williams. All Rights Reserved.