Adegoke’s Pencils

He breaks them in secret, with glee. We give him crayons instead. He is happy to be in limbo between the demands of scantron sheets and coloring between the lines. I don’t know how to convince him that such a place is leading him in circles. He scrawls green and yellow letters across the page. I want to give him a pen, but that is forbidden. Crayons but not pens, and never a working pencil.