You're standing on the high school steps,
the double doors swung closed behind you
for the last time, not the last time you'll ever
be damned or praised by your peers, spoken of
in whispers, but the last time you'll lock your locker,
zip up your gym bag, put on your out-of-style jacket,
your too-tight shoes. You're about to be
done with it: the gum, the gossip, the worship
of a boy in the back row, the histories of wheat and war,
cheat sheets, tardies, the science of water,
negative numbers and compound fractions.
You don't know it yet but what you'll miss
is the books, heavy and fragrant and frayed,
the pages greasy, almost transparent, thinned
at the edges by hundreds of licked thumbs.
What you'll remember is the dumb joy
of stumbling across a passage so perfect
it drums in your head, drowns out
the teacher and the lunch bell's ring. You've stolen
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn from the library.
Lingering on the steps, you dig into your bag
to touch its heat: stolen goods, willfully taken,
in full knowledge of right and wrong.
You call yourself a thief. There are worse things
you think, fingering the cover, tracing
the embossed letters like someone blind.
This is all you need as you take your first step
toward the street, joining characters whose lives
will unfold at your touch. You follow them into
the blur of the world. Into whoever you're going to be.