I Fear What I Fear: 8th grade, Rm. 204

These cento poems just keep opening up new worlds to me. As I cut up the students' anonymous submissions to make the lines, I'm finding it hard to know what to do with the strips afterwards. I've been taking pictures of them. This piece has a lot of interesting approaches to common topics like death, darkness, and family. I admire how the students came at their lines with some incredibly inventive language. And one student, perhaps not on purpose, gave us our ending. Enjoy. This is from Mrs. Fenton's 8th grade class in Room 204.

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I Fear What I Fear
Room 204, Mrs. Fenton's 8th grade class at Lee School and Rachel Javellana


I am scared of people that stare at me and do not look away.
I fear the other world of the death.
I fear homeless people.
I fear death and the fact of not living.
I fear dying because I want to see my family grow.
I fear being alone.
I fear death coming into my family.
I fear the darkness in the street when I’m walking alone.
I fear the bad, haunting and tripping me.
I fear the fact of letting my anger GO and hurting others.
I fear that my life is just made up because people think that I am just a show-off.
I fear cats because they like scaring me.
I fear monsters in my closet.
I fear the darkness of my attic when it is dark outside.
I fear the other side of the dark.
I fear not being good in school.
I fear losing someone I love. Someone I care about.
I fear dark woods in the dark.
I fear her having to go back.
I fear behaving bad with my mom and dad.
I fear lightning when it’s flashing in the sky.
I fear the darkness without her being there.
I fear the big ugly monsters under my bed.
I fear not getting into the high school.
I fear me not living up to my dream and proving to everyone that I can be something. Don’t say I can’t be nothing.
I am scared to look at myself in the mirror in the dark.
I fear what’s going to happen in the future.
I am afraid to die and feel lonely when I die.
I fear my dog howling at the moon.
I fear spiders walking around the ugly body.
I fear getting shot because of violence.
I fear getting shot to my dome.
I fear dying in my sleep.
I fear seeing the person I love with someone else.
I fear the lonely scary dark.
I fear not living.
I fear homework on weekends.
I fear her missing major events in my life.
I fear the darkness.
I fear my mouth, what it says.
I fear clowns with their scary face.
I fear the sharp needles that hold pain.
I fear not making it to the majors.
I fear losing my PS2.
I fear crazy cats. I think they would bite my finger out of my hand.
I fear death because of how criminals are always killing people.
I fear bugs, those who have dozens of legs and sting.
I fear a stranger who comes into my house. When I’m alone.
I fear bad grades. The ones lower than seventy percent.
I fear growing up without my parents because they get killed or die when I’m still a young age.
I fear big vicious dogs.
I fear getting a deadly disease.
I fear quizzes because I may fail.
I fear scared cats.
I fear me getting killed at a young age.
I fear dying.
I fear not being able to play baseball.
I fear her having to go back for a long time.
I fear spiders, that they will crawl on me and try to eat me.
I fear nasty little bugs crawling everywhere.
I fear a crazy man.
I fear old homes with no life, dark.
I fear wasps and bees because they will sting me.
I fear that I will not make it to be a rapper because I don’t know how to rhyme.
I fear cats that don’t know me.
I the dark because I can’t see so I don’t know if something might jump out.
I fear the fact that my parents are sick.
I fear clowns; scary, ugly, loud clowns.
I fear little kids when I have to babysit.
I fear spiders; ugly, big spiders. They crawl on people.
I fear dying.
I fear seeing spiders.
I fear monsters.
I fear my dad coming home drunk.
I fear messing up my right arm.
I fear when I am walking in the street alone in the dark.
I fear pitch black places.
I fear doing drugs in the future.
I fear my mind, who may think wrong sometimes.
I fear what I fear.
I fear nothing ’cause I’m scared of nothing.
I fear nothing.
I fear nothing.