Long ago there was

A little girl,

So Scared

And Defiant

And Young

So small the wind

Could blow her over

And she never smiled

And she never laughed

And her whole world crushed her shoulders

 

The crowds

Made her dizzy

The people

Talked much too loud

And people yelled at her to be better

To be less Scared

Less Defiant

Less Young

Grow up

They screamed until they were blue in the face

 

And at night she cried

Because the monsters

Were coming

To get her

Inky, black shadows

On purple walls

 

In the mornings

She would lie in bed

The sun streaming in through the blinds

Turning her brown hair gold

And wish she could leave

 

She would stare

At the dusty bookshelf

And the books with

Bindings breaking

And wish she could climb

Into the pages

Faint in the poppy field

And run in

The dark forest

Away from the soupy heat

And cold Winters

Of the boring town

She’d grown in

 

It came in late August

As she stood in the hall

Of a new school

The old girl

Scared

And Defiant

And Young

And she saw him

A muse masked by cologne

And a sideways smile

With hair like the light streaming in from her blinds

And eyes

Forever changing colors

 

Seasons changed

Boys grew to men

And girls became beautiful

Voices deepened

And she began to sing

She captured the summer in her voice

 And the spring in her step

 

One morning

As the sun came in through the blinds

Turning her hair to fire

As usual

She ran to the desk

With the flowers by the window

And wrote a song

A song about a day

In the hallway

Simple and rhyming

Without depth or class or

The techno beats of

The new generation

 

And before they woke

She’d finished

That song

And the shadowed monsters

Faded,

Into the ink on the page

 

And the little blossom

That had bloomed

When no one was watching

Could

Just see the future

A mist of confusion and swirling happiness

Awaiting her

At the opposite bank

 

And so

Scared

And Defiant

And Young

Stepped into it

Surely

With only a pen

And a notebook

At her side