i remember how in seventh grade
my pre-algebra teacher looked
at my mom, and at me, and said:
your daughter is simple.
as if i wasn't standing there;
as if those words were too complex
for me to understand.
i remember how i went down to the library
passed the handicapped entrance sign
thinking these doors were meant
for people like me.
how i went on the computer
and cut out my face and pasted it
onto the bodies of princeton graduates,
brain surgeons, atomic bomb operators.
how above the pictures i wrote the caption:
can retards do this?
and i whispered to the homeless man next to me
that i was not as simple as i looked.
he wouldn't look at me, but i think
that i heard him say
neither am i.
we agreed that one day we would
turn everything we'd ever say
into orange colored italic lettering
that would glisten in gold and
the whole world would know we were
anything but simplistic.
my guidance counselor tells me that
moments like that are just as simple as i am,
and i bet that that if i wrote it down in a notepad,
teachers would still make copies for their seventh graders,
and still say to their brightest students:
you have ten minutes to figure out what it all means.