“ Why Are You So Quiet? ” “Why are you so quiet?” My five year-old self lifts my head from the Cinderella coloring book I was intensely focused on to meet the excited, bulging eyes of my kindergarten class clown. Even then it dumbfounded me that someone with the social skills to charm an entire class with his witty remarks could simply not comprehend that his endless gregariousness was not a universal trait. Back then I didn’t think much of it, although I did find it odd that my preference for coloring over social interaction was an unsolvable mystery, requiring constant questioning from the finest five year-old detectives that the Indianapolis Public School system had to offer. My quietness was a brandishing, and I realize now it was all they saw of me. --- “She needs to talk more.” My eight year-old self sits patiently, hands folded tightly under my desk, at the annual parent-teacher conference. I was at the top of my class, I never turned in a late assignment, and I was reading high...
a collection of poetry, prose, photographs, and thoughts