(Note: I just wrote this. I have not really attempted to polish it yet.)
A Poem to my Tween Self - #1
You read books
day and night.
You read stories
to be able to disappear
in time and place
in time and place
just for a little while.
Other times you try
to write the original
stories
that flit through
your mind constantly –
even at school.
You have discovered
Lurlene McDaniel’s early
books by now.
You love the melodrama of
illness and hospitals,
and of boyfriends
dying.
They are very quick and easy
to read. You love
them, but think these things
them, but think these things
will never happen
to you.
In your mind, you think you
will
grow up and go
to college – maybe major
in meteorology – and someday
in the vague distant future
get married.
There will be four children
–
at least three girls and
then
a boy for balance. You always wanted
a little sister, and Mom told you to have
a daughter someday instead.
You never even have
an inkling
that you might have
two little boys
someday
someday
and that the first very
loved
and wanted
baby boy
might die
in the hospital
in the middle of
the night.
