The tiny script of eight-point font
Lines the page,
One row piled atop another, the crossed 't's and dotted 'i's
Blurring together to make something more the likes of modern art than information.
The words mingle, tell each other their stories,
As if it is a joy to prevent silence.

"Mr. Hope, where doth thou cometh from?"

"The Greek had a pleasant intrigue with me.
The tale of a box and a girl they keep close,
Forever staring at me, a ceramic on their mantelpieces.

"And might I ask you, Madame Ingénue,
What places your letters have seen as you move
With the tongues which speak your name?"

Before the dame can respond, I am again
Drowning
In this dialect's meaning.
These sheets of bibulous-thin paper are void of a single turn-of-phrase,
Lack metaphors one would marry,
And tell no humorous tale of a bumbling being such as myself.
"Remittances" hardly speak of an origin so enthralling as a pun on the name of Odysseus,
And my hungry mind takes no interest in the devastating tales of the Sudan Boys,
Not when their sad ballads are interrupted by fiendish sentences about the migration of socioeconomic classes,
And how such emigration from poorer regions piques the interest of the brains which belong to geographers.

I am no man,
Hunting down answers to population growth,
Staring at points on a map where Islam appears, just to find the likenesses between each thumbtack's place, so that I may someday figure out
Why?
The pinpoints show nothing but a location, an absolute point,
Made using coordinates which coordinate the reasons pertaining to the question which they so desperately need the answer to,
For the entirety of their being relies on whether or not they can explain a phenomena,
Which they believe is too complicated for the mind of a simpleton.

These pages of incomprehensible words belong to they who write theories just to dumb down their apparently complex and extravagant ideas,
Just so I, the patriarchy-defined, idiot "woman" they take me for, may understand these themes
Like a child does calculus:

"What's that, Ma?"

"Big-kid math."

Yes, I agree, this big-kid math is just too much for me, O' Mother who has a fancy for sector models and Robinson projections!
Your ludicrous words,
Your miserably vain words which plague hundreds of textbook pages
With a vocabulary you wouldn't give a crap about if your sequent occupancy-loving heart weren't so invested in maps,
Maps that sprawl across pages and pages and
Pages,
Have convinced me of my intelligence.
Your language has convinced my brain of one thing:
That I am just not good enough to understand the intention of your printed words,
Which gossip and tell rumors more than a stupid "girl" like me should,
And you remind me how little you must know,
Despite all that education
And all that studying
And all that hate
And all that.

You must learn,
No matter how much your goddamn pages of arrows and symbols and captions and innumerable paragraphs may teach me,
You are not the fountain from which comes forth bucketsful of innovative thoughts.

And if you dare say that bone-chilling question,
Why?
I will find it due that you are answered with truth and nothing less.

"Why?"

Because I am no fool.
Your miniscule font-size of those millions of lengthy words do not daunt me,
Or prove anything about me.

You say "rising total fertility rate,"
But I know you and your bigotry believe the real words are "slutty women,"
When truly, it's all of those asinine facts you throw in my face about culture defining it,
Like the regional importance of having a son, rather than the disenfranchised sex being foul, grotesque creatures of desire.

Oh, what's that?
I've learned, from your stupid words,
And maybe I'll even succeed because of the thoughtless ideas you've placed in my mind.
Because old, blind men have decided we all must follow teachings of movement,
So we might fall into the rhythm and never once question it.

Yes, I'm going places,
Places you have defined in dizzying
Eight-point font.

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First written and published on October 1st, 2016.