There were many who I held a candle to

in a world full of chalk dust, well aimed projectiles

and the despair of being told that you

were not good enough to breathe the same air

as the teacher’s favourite Rottweiler,

snarling, punishing with savage artistry

and then finished off with the red pen death

of being

wrong, wrong, wrong.

 

There were many, my diary attests to this unhappy fact,

who in one way or another made my life more bearable

when not in English, History or the love of the drama