After Father died, I had all the wrong thoughts.Step-Father, a Man of Science, prescribes Spiders:For My Condition. Both Common, and Endangered,crumpled onto teatime curds, or confined withinsentient globules of butter. One writhes in a nutshell,when threaded at the neck. For Fever, or Ungovernable Emotion.On occasion, they forget their lines. Some eruptfrom labelled bottles he keeps all over the house. Step-Father,Perturbed by my bouts of shrieking – (How he creepsin my chamber at night. Those hairy legs. Tufted!I can’t stand the sight) – then it’s Off! to the Hysterium!Little Miss, must rest. Were he takes away my journals,(and then nothing happens but the silk wallpaper)leaves me only his hornbook made of gingerbreadwith Arachnids, discretely beaten into the batter.It was the most concentrated moment of my life.I listen with my ankles in case Father is watching.In my abdomen I make thoughts trace diaphanous linessilken striping diagonal all the way to the sillof the high turret window. What patience!when climbing one two seven ten eleven then, downthe sticky rungs of the lattice sometimes the roomtilts getting mixed in with the pudding (feminine foot-steps in the hall could belong to anyone) I am spinning. Letter E: The Education of Little Miss MuffetBut she must have had thoughts while she sat.The Little Miss Muffet nursery rhyme may have been inspired by the real-life girl named Patience Mouffat.Patience was the step-daughter of Dr. Thomas Mouffat (1553-1604),the first British scientist to catalogue insects, at that.Historians continue to debate the nursery rhyme’s origins.Her own story remains unrecorded therein.Author of The Theater of Insects and Lesser Living Creatures, Dr. Mouffat is said to have fed Patience spidersas a medical treatment. None have said whether Patience wanted them inside her.During this time, many medical practitioners believed that the ingestionof spiders could cure a wide variety of ailments in question.Spiders were eaten live, of course. They were also worn as pendants or chokers, and integrated into commonrecipes, by choice or by force.In her 1914 article “How it feels to be Forcibly Fed,” Djuna Barnes wrote:“It was the most concentrated moment of my life.”She published this article after willingly submitting herself to be force-fedby doctors, in her solidarity with contemporary hunger-strikingfemale suffragettes who were being restrained, and then, to this practice, subjected.Thinking himself an expert on the subject, Hippocrates wrote of The Womb, Hystera.Considering the womb migratory, Hippocrates declared it bad, and sad.Ancient Egyptians too believed it to wander the halls of The Female Body, causing ailments with symptoms rangingfrom the very fluctuation of emotions, depression, innumerable symptoms now identified as PTSD, and derangementssuch as the fondness for writing: all of which were once considered forms of “hysteria.”To induce fondness for writing and elocution, British hornbooks were small, single-sided tablets used as primersfor educating children as early as 1326, up to the late 18^th century, in Britain. Letters of the alphabet and theLord’s Prayer were fondly inscribed onto a small frame from which extended a handle. The tablet was coveredwith parchment much like butcher’s paper. Sometimes made of gingerbread, hornbooks doubled in function:as punitive paddle for imprecise recitations,and as edible reward upon successful elocution.Dorothea Tanning, a surrealist-affiliated artist, painted wild mindscapes of the lives of girls and women.She once described her childhood home as the place “where nothing happens but the wallpaper.”But she must have had thoughts while she sat.  I do not speculate regarding the actual lives of the historic famille MouffatRather, I offer a poetic imaginary, in exploration of the cultural history within which this ubiquitous nurseryrhyme was born. As per accounts of the lives of women and girls considered to be legal “property,”I write this for that imaginary, nameless girl whom everyone called sillyfor having shrieked, perhaps quite thoughtfully,from that tuffet.