Hunched under the weight of expectations, 
which can sometimes chime from human throats
but are more often studied on tiny screens,
they drift during passing time along high school hallways.

They wear mostly sweatshirts in unnoticeable colors—
gray, dark blue, brown, and black, 
making all their torsos shapeless in the same way
as their perfect young hands hold phones at heart level.

It could be any high school, Hancock High 
or Highland Park. It could be 2015 or today.

There’s always a backpack sagging low and straining
at the seams from heavy textbooks, notebooks, school-
issued unopened planners, folders, and maybe colored 
pencils, a personal journal, or even a teddy bear.

And so much homework to not complete, so many
classes to consider skipping, so many friends who are not,
and always the rounded shoulders and head tilted phone-ward.

They glide along, neither fast nor slow, each like a drop
in a subterranean stream, flowing from class to class, 
where they sit beside people they don’t like, and try to avoid
attention from all the teachers who never understand.