I am afraid of exams

some exams scar you for life, they haunt

your days, keep you up at night - bleeding

despair from the edge of tattered notebooks

you prepare, practice and persist - struggling

to barely keep up with the pace of a million

other aspirants who need the same job.

its your dream, your partner's dream, your

family's dream - nobody cares if you fail

or waste your entire life struggling to clear

an exam that ends up defining your very

habits, character, identity and destiny.

after every exhausted attempt you feel like

tearing apart every book, cursing every answer

you wrote or burning down all the charts and

formulae on your wall, deleting all the contacts

on your phone, and you dread calling your parents

cause even God knows, disappointment kills them.

for a week you're in shock, food tastes like

metal covered with rust, sleep has abandoned

you, relatives call only to poke at your laziness,

and suddenly the world seems to have lost its

colors - like a bad, silent black n' white film.

I hate this system where children are forced

to study for exams and no one cares to teach

them that when there's life, there's a hope for

a tomorrow and suicide is not the answer.