The Boy Who Didn’t Fit the Lesson Plan

He sat in the back, not out of rebellion but self-preservation.
The front row was for the hopeful, the hungry.
He wasn’t either.
Not here.

His desk was a lonely island in a sea of syllabus learning and cold whiteboards.
He didn’t care about old kings, he wanted to know how to find inspiration.
Why do people say one thing and mean another?

Why do you seem so certain that these rules are the correct ones to follow?

They called it apathy.
They were wrong.

He asked questions that made the syllabus blush:
"What causes society to judge so harshly whilst remaining so sensitive?
"How many ways are there to be intelligent?"
"How do we know that any of this actually matters?”

The answers never came.
Not from the teachers whose eyes were already halfway home.
Not from the career advisor who matched his love of being outdoors
with a career as a park ranger.

When smiling, politely.
We can sometimes die a little inside.

But when he got home, it was different.
There were worn rugs and curious minds and dinners full of stories
he came alive again.

His parents didn’t ask him why he wasn’t thriving.
They already knew that his mind demanded something different.
They asked about his dreams,
about the strange things he noticed,
the little ideas that bloomed in his quiet moments.

They didn’t push.
They didn’t panic.
They just stayed close.
Like the moon to the tide.

He still didn’t know what he wanted to be.
But he was building something.
A story, maybe,
or a way of seeing the world that didn’t need gold stars to mean something.

He would find his way.
Not because the world made sense.
But because he had a safe place to come back to
while he figured it out.

Nuance with no marks
he grew wild where no one looked,
watered most elsewhere.