Orangutan

The new girl
Became the object of envy
In the class,
She spoke so fluently
In English
That she was treated
With deference
Even by the teacher,
We were wary
Of getting into arguments
With her, as our vocabulary
Was soon exhausted
And she used words
We often needed
To look up in the dictionary,
Once the two of us got into a fight
When we were going home
It was over our favourite film stars
She was a fan of the action hero
My family and I hated with all our hearts,
Standing at a safe distance
We threw hot words
At each other
We soon ran out of
All the names
Of the animals we knew
Suddenly she threw a strange creature at me
"Orangutan!Orangutan!Orangutan!"
I didn't know what it meant
But I felt so humiliated
I sat down in the middle of the street
And cried and cried ---
I never spoke to the orangutan again.