By Audrey Regan
My teacher said,
I’m grade one
That I am not the brightest
She told me “You can’t spell,
School isn’t something you’ll do well.”
I asked my mom if she was right,
“I can talk and read and write.
I just don’t know where vowels go.”
She told me don’t explain when you can show.
Testing, finally my time had come.
I shocked her when I wasn’t dumb.
At long last I’d have my place,
In a reading group that was my pace.
But I didn’t get that spot once more.
My tiny jaw, it hit the floor.
I asked “why,” my head a whirl.
She said, “You’d be the only girl.”
I believe that when I first felt cheated,
Like all my work had been deleted.
My brain meant less because I wore pink,
My curly pigtails meant I couldn’t think?
I think maybe that is why,
I have always felt such a need
To prove myself to the masses.
Why I stopped dressing up and wore my glasses.
I hunkered down and I began
A long, elaborate, revenge plan.
I wrote more than any peer.
My journals filled up every year.
I worked until I became
The kid that doesn’t seem the same.
Because I liked to think and read and write,
But long ago I set my sights.
I’m not great I’ll bluntly say.
But I earned the score I got in May.
I still can’t spell and that won’t stop.
But this is the clearest I’ll see the top.
I’m not so average when I do my best,
I think any teacher would attest.
So, from my seat in AP Loy,
In all the work that I submit
I really hope that you can see
What this subject means to me.
One day I hope I will return,
To the women who left the harshest burn.
She’ll say “Audrey it’s been so long.”
And I will say “You were wrong.”
Trojan Times 