No Idea

7

I've never liked poems that rhymed.

I'm not sure why but I can not even get through the fourth line without averting my attention to something else. I'm convinced that this is normal and that there are tons of people who feel the same way as I do for no reason other than just personal preference.

But in kindergarden when we learned to read and write we were taught that "mad" rhymed with "sad" rather than that we would face both these things soon enough and would want them as far away from each other as possible.

In third grade my teacher leaned down and her bright pink lips asked me to read my story out loud to the class. I quickly stood up with my paper in my hands and rambled about how the future scared me and I looked up beaming and Dougie in the corner stopped eating his glue and my teachers mouth was a straight pink line and Amy in the blue dress cocked her head to the side and asked "Miss Teacher Lady" why it didn't rhyme and she said that I "wrote differently" and that practice makes perfect and that I should use my indoor voice. That is when I thought I learned that being different was wrong and that I needed to practice being like everyone else.

In sixth grade we learned about synonyms and how you could replace certain words with others and your sentence would still mean the same thing but I never firmly grasped why I got a C on my paper about love and pain, and why my teacher said I just needed to practice and why my parents looked down at my paper with tears in the corners of their eyes. I thought I was getting worse and that I would never be the same as everyone else and that that was why my parents sat me down that night and tried to teach me about how love and pain were very different but sometimes they coexist.

And in ninth grade my english teacher said that my writing level was too advanced for rhyming poems and patted me on the back and took my work and pinned it amongst a sea of words that all sounded the same. And I saw myself again and again, standing out in the crowd I so desperately wanted to become part of.

But now, now I think the reason I hate rhyming poems so much is because of all the thought that goes into them and how polished they are and how every word has been planned and how I know nothing in my life will ever feel as put together as a damn rhyming poem but hey, there may be tons of people who feel the same way due to nothing more or less than personal preference.