When I was a little girl,
my mother would take me
to the library every week.
We lived in a tiny town,
with little else to do.
These days were my favorites.
I’d run my hand along
the old book spines,
taking my time choosing
the ones that I would
carry home with me,
the ones that would
carry me away for hours.
I would gather as many
as I could manage
in my spindly arms,
and my mother, knowing that
I would read them all in
the course of a week,
would check out every one of them
and then leave me
to my words.
The library was a place
where the world expanded,
where I learned that it was possible
to be more than just
a poor girl from a poor family
who would never amount
to anything spectacular or significant.
The library brought every possibility
to my fingertips and said
it could happen for me.
The library gave me knowledge
and perspective and a way forward
through every circumstance
that found me.
And so the library
was essential to becoming,
to understanding,
to enduring.
This is an excerpt from Textbook of an Ordinary Life: poems. For more of Rachel’s poems, visit her Reader Library page, where you can get a few volumes for free.
(Photo by Helen Montoya Photography.)
