Language and Learning
I read a text in English today.
The words were printed letters on the page. They were soulless and unblinking. They were examples of grammar and text and everything at the base of my writing.
I almost cried writing it. It clogged in my throat, shook around my head and pried out some deep-rooted disgust in myself that I think was shame.
Back home, they might have had a word for it. I don’t know it anymore. I’m stuck with the words; inadequacy, nostalgia, reckoning, envy. I’m stuck annotating the connotations, connecting the semantic fields and the rhythmic parallelism of flipping pages; scribbled lines, clicking binders;
Did tears stain the poet's skin? Did crumbled papers rot in the waste bin nearby? Do their fingers ache from pressing the buttons? Do their pens hurt from writing? Do their eyes sting from studying? Does their heart ache they know they’ll never achieve anything as great as
that one text from English class.
