Hit the Coffee; Absorb the Books

There's a romanticism to sitting down in a bookstore with a yet unpaid for book in hand

Seeking out the coziest corner where your Momma won't find you 

Not for want of searching or yelled whispers

Cup of coffee in hand as rain hits the glass beside you

There's a romanticism to the whole picture

But then you've burnt your tongue  

The books has a bland adventure with a too quick to build airport bookstore plot

And you've got the runs

What a wonderful, perfectly unromantic childhood

No cozy, small town bookstore could satisfy me when I had the biggest and the best of them all

Borders

Two levels to get lost in and a coffee shop in the back to boot

So many places to hide and delay the inevitable trip back home:

hopefully with a new friend to cuddle with

I started drinking coffee when I was 9 

Staying up late and reading was my forte

But all I wanted in life was to be my Momma which was a feat that required

Constant caffination and simultaneous education

Didn't hurt that more coffee meant later nights and more books to devour

My passion for reading and coffee simultaneously drowned in the reality of the world

I quickly adopted an existential ideal that unforgivingly fought against my desire to escape

To one of my old, treasured worlds while determined to create a deeper purpose for my existence

My passion was reincarnated when I starved with the need to press every thought that passed 

Into stories no other mind could behold and share the wonderous imagination I so dearly missed

Being sucked into at every available, inappropriate opportunity

This need to write quickly reignited my unquenchable thirst for the written word and the need

To know more, always more

Coffee and books, I soon discovered, are not a suitable university diet

The soft literature I once longed to chew softly and tenderly 

Were replaced for technical books that required devouring as rapidly as a starved man

So as not to appreciate the taste, but obtain the nutrients

But there are days when I can borrow those choked down terms that took me days to digest

And explain to my mother what is happening to her brain as she ages

And why she can no longer function as she once did though she looks as young as she is

Those are the days when education makes sense and I am more grateful 

Than even the tears on my cheeks can express for that early push in my development 

To read, to understand, and to open my mind to the wonders that I will never comprhend but,

Good God, I should try with everything that I have

This poem is about: 
Me
My community

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