when she was a little girl
she came stumbling in at a little over 2 foot 2
she wanted to meet the world and see and hear and do
and her favorite place to visit was the library she had made in her mind
the shelves stocked with all the stories and adventures she could find

but when she started kindergarten the other kids had all turned mean
they whispered when the teacher wasn't looking
Nobody wants to read
and she didn't want to be Nobody- that wasn't like the heroes in her book
so now the only time she read was when no one was around to look

and when she decided not to be a Nobody
she had to start worrying about other things
like shoes and clothes and songs and who does and does not sing
and when she turned 17 she discovered the use of pills
from there her life became too blurry to read the warning Drunk Driving Kills

so when she got into the car too wasted in the back
she never would have guessed 7 months later in rehab she wouldn't be able to walk a lap
because broken bones and faded bruises were just the surface scars
because for eleven years she had lost the child in her who read about the stars

but it was tucked away in a hospital bed months after the crash
she met a boy who wrote about her red hair as fire, she decided he could be her match
and on nights she flashed back to screaming white headlights he would hold her hand
and one day with him by her side she relearned to stand

sometimes they reminisced about who they were before the world told them what to do
when she whispered "I used to read" he grinned back "No way, me too."
and while it took a lot of loving to teach her to read again
what a beautiful gift it was to remind her that she can

her whole life had been made of chapters
but she now had the time to realize
just how important it was to look at life with wide open eyes
now she understood just what it took
because when he smiled at her, she realized he was her entire book.