Learning Difficulties

 

She always wants the same thing as her sister

for breakfast, and when I read a book,

she opens hers, turns a page, marks her place

 

as if she were spooning every sentence.

Her birth mother says she doesn’t want her

to go to the school for dummies.

 

Her class teacher claims she’s fearless

and a real trouper; he doesn’t fathom

her ignorance of danger.

 

When she tells me I’m so idiot,

I hear only echolalia and a child

so far behind she might be drowning.

 

We’re pulling her from mainstream

to the shallows where the current drive

to mark and measure isn’t so insistent.

 

The good news is we’ll never study

Of Mice and Men together; that’s both  

too far a stretch and too close to home.

 

When we tell her, she’ll take fright

and slam shut all the doors  left open.

We can’t imagine where she gets that from.