The Reaper in College
By India Shank
OH MY GOD! Being on my own, it's like I can’t breathe. Doesn’t even matter if I'm a million miles away
from my family.
This is COLLEGE. What if the professors intimidate my knowledge? And the Deans make me
scream because my financial aid ain't paid so they make me leave causing me to push to the edge
and throw away my dreams?
This is greater education. Better accommodations but I am on the edge of that cliff, and I load up
the clip, and BANG! I’m gone…But college.
I’m running around campus pretending to be one of many leaders, but little do they know
I’m fighting the spirit behind me. I call him the Grim Reaper cause it's all psychological. It's all in my
mind but physically it's an invisible man telling me what actions to take. And I’m not going to lie.
Being black and going to a PWI might cause me to need an alibi because I'll be paranoid but at an
HBCU I'll be surrounded by black people who look and act just like you so this grim reaper might
tell me to let that gun flow through but not the gun with bullets just the gun that bullet points
my life.
This is college but inside me is death…Who am I to let the negative take me, that is theft, but they
put that bullet hole in my dome so now I could let college be the death of me, ya’know, ecstasy
recipes or I could put my strength into this biological geometry, maybe premed things.
I'd rather die from the stress of trying to be great than giving up and letting the Reaper take my
fate.
So college intellectual knowledge is something that I crave so the enemy (inner me) must behave.
It’s no time to think of my grave.