Books

My escape since I turned twelve years old

going into barnes and noble and searching the shelves for lives I could never have became a monthly thing,

reading anything and everything I could get my hands on.

They breathed life into me at my weakest moments,

crying after another night of being ignored by my stepmother and father.

Picking up a book was the only thing that kept me going.

Imagining fighting a higher power or falling in love

kept me going

I’ve never really had a creative bone in my body.

I couldn’t paint like Van Gogh

Or write like Fitzgerald.

So instead I read Fitzgerald

Which gave me ideas of another life,

another me,

That could paint like Van Gogh.

I imagined being famous,

Or changing the world.

I imagined falling a love so grand it would contest even the greatest writers

like Hemingway and Fitzgerald.

I imagined finding myself and doing what I’m scared of

like Chopin showed.

I imagined having powers and leading a revolution

and showing the world what I was made of.

I imagined being a desaparecido in Argentina or Chile.

I imagined being Jewish during World War 2.

I imagined things that took me beyond the earth and into another world

and made me realize the impact I could possibly have.

I am now nineteen

And I still can’t paint like Van Gogh

Or write like Fitzgerald.

I learned how to accept the world I live in

And the hand I was dealt.

But I still imagine changing the world

and making a difference.

I am also still learning from the past,

My own and the worlds.

But I still read.

Still read anything I can get my hands on.

I have big dreams,

But books still teach me that my dreams can always be bigger.

And that this is our life

And we make of it what we will.

It’s not always perfect like it is sometimes in books.

There are problems and things happen.

But you can always change your own world

and how you live your life.