Poetry (nonmonetized)
Most Likely To
Weekend Challenge 8: Just Do It
In first grade,
I am told I am a problem.
I can’t sit still, I misbehave.
I have ADHD.
I need special attention.
There is a message: you are not good.
Stop telling stories. Stop reading in class. Stop fidgeting.
Pay attention.
Why are you so stupid?
In grade two,
they tell me I am Gifted.
I need extra work, not extra help.
I was falling behind because I was so far ahead.
Let her read when she’s done the work and she’ll do it.
Give her puzzles, give her fidget toys.
Then she won’t be such a
“disruption.”
In grade three,
I am told I am a know-it-all.
“Don’t correct your teachers’ mistakes,
even when you know they’re wrong.
It makes them look bad; it makes them hate you.”
In my new glasses, standing a head taller than everyone else,
I am a sore thumb.
I write a story about a Thanksgiving turkey
who is different, and escapes the farm.
He who walks a different path
does not get eaten.
In grade five,
I stand in my swimsuit on the edge of the highest diving board:
the one made for adults.
I am big enough, but not brave enough. I tremble.
My fifth-grade teacher shoots me a thumbs up —
and I leap, holding my nose with my fingers.
As I swim back to the edge, I hear the lifeguard.
She says, “She’s eleven? That one will be a model.
I’d kill to have that body.”
I want to die inside.
I am almost six feet tall and weigh nothing;
I am used to being sexualized by adults.
I am used to being catcalled
and told I am so pretty and blonde.
My teacher is the first to see past the tall and thin and blonde.
She says, “No, that one will be a writer,”
and I dunk my head under water to disappear.
She assigns me extra work to keep my hands and mind busy.
She says, “Write me a story.”
I write her a story, and another, and another.
In grade seven,
I am six feet tall and still weigh nothing,
I am put on the basketball team to catch rebounds.
I catch a basketball to the teeth and end my career
with my braces spinning around the wire,
spitting blood. I sit on the sidelines and write poems,
hoping they won’t put me back in the game.
I am told I need to focus or I’ll never be good at sports —
I spit blood and fury onto the page instead of in their faces.
In high school,
they tell me I write at the college level.
I am put into all the university-track courses.
I am made editor of the yearbook. I have a press pass.
I take photos at all the school events. I am always there —
but never in the pictures. I take them of everyone else.
I am invisible. I am the good girl. I run the school website.
I make the PowerPoints and set up the projector, and get called to the office
to fix the principal’s computer. I am alone with adults all the time and
I am felt up by a teacher.
Wait —
This isn’t how the story is supposed to go.
A rumor goes around that I am sleeping with my teacher.
(Not the one who felt me up — the one who gives a shit.)
It is a “well-known fact” that I’m a slut, or something.
The other teachers look the other way.
I’m not their problem. I’m the good girl, the easy one.
Things will work themselves out.
In senior year,
I get my friends to vote for my superlative:
Most Likely to Become An Author.
I get just enough votes to put it in the yearbook.
My picture is in the yearbook, next to all the popular kids.
They are Most Likely To become criminals, athletes, politicians.
There are in-jokes I don’t understand; I just take the picture.
When it comes out in print, I hate the look on my own face.
It is a joke;
I am a joke;
who would ever believe I could be
an author?
In university,
no one cares anymore. Everyone is the weirdo here.
I remember being in grade five and feeling
for the very first time
like someone saw me.
“Write me a story.”
I pick up a pen (metaphorically — I type)
for the first time in a long time.
I write a novel.
I send it to a publisher (as a joke).
(Who would want me?)
(I am weird. I am disruptive. I am a failure.)
I get back a contract in an email.
I am an author. I get paid $500 in advance.
I am an author. I get a cover design, professional editing.
In the acknowledgments (to my book)
I put her name — my fifth-grade teacher.
Other teachers, too. Ones who cared.
But I remember her, on the side of the pool:
“No, that one will be a writer.”
Thank you for letting me know,
and for making me write you a story.
I just wanted to let you know,
I am an author. You were right.
Thank you Ravyne Hawke for this Weekend Challenge: “Write about a time in your life when someone pushed you to do something you didn’t want to do. Was the outcome a positive one or a negative one? Would you do it again?”
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