Reading is trying to fit a rectangular book

into a brain shaped space.

There is no way to do it without stretching your mind

at least a little bit,

changing the way you look at the world.

I’ve managed to fit a ton of books in my brain.

I once stood in the young adult section of the public library,

counted all the stories I had already read.

It was almost all of them.

I reminisced of all the places I had been,

characters I had befriended,

lessons I had learned,

and I was still standing in the middle of the library.

After you read a book,

you find places in the world

where reality has eroded, worn down, frayed,

and pieces of the story shine though.

You will discover that the world isn’t only yours,

you are sharing it with authors and poets.

My best friend’s yellow car can no longer be just a car;

sitting in it takes me back to the 1920’s.

Thanks to F. Scott Fitzgerald,

it holds the ghosts of Jay Gatsby and Daisy Buchanan.

It is a symbol of the American dream.

No one can call something a “Catch-22”

without receiving an eye roll from me.

Captain Yossarian and Joseph Heller are not friends of mine,

But that book certainly stretched my mind.

And that’s the point of it all.

I hope that at the end of my life,

my mind will be unrecognizable

As the one in my head today.  

A totally different shape,

Because I will never stop reading.