Smart Girl

02.04.17

or when maybe you aren't complex at all, just a single concept that wasn't perceived in the first place.

i had taken the practice test 62 times, at that point. clicking through the questions, i could answer them quicker than light. the words were memorized, inscribed on my retinas so that one half-second-long glance at the question would allow me the ability to know what the answer was.

it was a hard thought to swallow, that i hardly knew the answers so much as memorized them.

and they call me the smart girl, i thought to myself.

it was hard to know that there is such a huge difference between raw intelligence and rote memorization, hard to know one thing, that one thing being that maybe they couldn't imagine me complexly enough to know that i'm not smart. i'm just a fact photographer.

sitting on my bed in the dim light of midmorning, i stared at the questions, tried to learn something other than how to see something and store the image of a green-highlighted answer to question eight in my brain.

after seeing the score from the practice quiz, i eased my laptop shut, then turned to my phone, to write of a life more thrilling than my own, under the name of someone no one knew i was veiled by.