They always treated me like I was dumb. Found a dunce cap in an old supply closet and forced it to fit my head.
Taunted me on the school blacktop about brains. (“Zombies walk away from you hungry because all they eat are brains. And you’ve got none.”)
So, for years, I kicked around the idea of rocks for brains, calling myself stupid at every turn.
(But I was my biggest schoolyard bully, taunting myself with hurtful names & beating myself up on the walk home.)
Truth be told, no one teased me for my ignorance, just my test scores, but you can’t measure creativity like that.
You can’t test a mind on hope and novelty thinking. You can’t squeeze onto a sheet with arbitrary questions the expanse of a human mind.
I could have been brilliant, but it was like stuffing a butterfly in a glass frame
They couldn’t see the brilliance (nor the glimmer) of the hope I’ve clung to.
My heart is a ragged cut of rose quartz beating alive in my chest.
Isabelle Palerma 