dear little girl.
i’ve seen you at the library before, and each time you walk in the sliding doors, i see the magic that alights your pupils. you smile, with your mouth missing a few teeth, and eagerly run to put your books in the book drop. then from there, you disappear into the runs of paperback books with velvet soft rounded corners. i envy you. the shelves tower over your head like the most perfect towers of knowledge. covers in violet and shimmery silver taunt you as bold letters march across covers to spell the titles. i envy you because the magic of the library is not as strong in me as it is you. i love the jerky rattle of the sliding doors, and the air that is perfumed with ink and yellowed paper. i know the places of my favorite novels by heart, and can tell you teh story behind every brown stain. i can tell you which books i loved and which books made my soul splinter and me rethink everything that i have ever learned in this life. the magic of the library is typed in imperfect black letters across my heart and soul. but i still envy you. for i have grown out of the stories of peter pan that pepper the shelves which i have to bend down to see now. i still adore the lost boys and the idea of a island where you never have to grow up. but i do not live there. so the looks i get when i wander into the section of the library with cartoon unicorns of the cover of books, is not to be desired. so when it is thirty minutes until the library closes, and most everyone is gone. when street lights illuminate the black and white parking lot, and the yellowed lamps at the library station gleam on flowery pens, i creep in. i walk quietly and quickly past the librian station, and creep towards the books with a familarity that makes me bones ache. these are the books i held with my small child hand and read underneath the pink quilt on my bed. these are the books that alite a passion for words inside of me. these are the books that were my first true friends, and my source of comfort for so long. and these books little girl, you can read. and i feel like a stranger to them in the daylight. when the library is crowded with young mothers and little boys with blue blankets. when the library is letting out girls with pigtails through the doors. then these books seem strange to me. foriegn. so i creep in at night when almost everyone is gone, and i slowly walk towards the shelf where i know they are. and little girl, i find the shelf empty. i look and see all my favorite books gone. and then i think of you little girl, reading the words with a spark in your eyes. and it does make me sad. sad that i can only hold my comfort blanket of books unashamed at night. sad that i have almost forgotten about my first friends that live on this shelf. but then i am not sad, because i think of the thousands of children whom i share this with. this magical feeling of familarity staring at the same book, cover, and title. then i am not sad. i am full of passion. and so little girl, take care of my books. take care of my first friends. they will never fail you. never. and when you leave this library and this place, you will see these titles again. on a new shelf. but the books will be the same. and even if you change and grow up, the books will never do that. and one day you will be like me little girl, and i image that we both will see our names underneath magical titles on shelves. because the magical feeling that we share, is the feeling of being a writer and a reader. and i wouldn’t change it for the world.
Perfectly Imperfect Me 