trust issues

Between the blue 

lines of pale 

wide ruled notebooks,

I used to draw

arrows (→)

at the bottom 

of my pages

when fifth-grade

teachers still wanted 

hand-written essays.

The arrows (→)

signaled there was more 

to read on the back.

Turn the page! 

it prompted.

Letting them know

I didn’t trust them

to flip the page over

without the arrows (→) 

they’d only read one side 

and mark my grade  

half of what 

it should’ve been.

By Jonathan Mann