Reading

I was young,

My hands barely mobile,

But my mind running faster than light. 

The thing my parents made me do;

They pushed me down,

To make me see,

The words that hung there,

Unintelligible to me. 

They meant nothing,

Simply something I had to do. 

One day,

Dad comes in,

Sits on my bed,

Pulled out a book,

And began to read. 

The thing is,

My dad does not like books,

He hates them,

In all the ink and paper bound shame. 

But when he read,

I wanted to do it too,

He gave me the many pages,

Of words I shouldn't have understood.

Night after night,

I read,

I pulled forth every word,

Dragging it razor sharp up out of my mind. 

Then the pain wasn't there,

And the murky waters cleared,

Everything came through clear. 

That fateful book,

Still rests on my shelf,

A memento of my passion,

The very seed,

Surround by the deepest roots,

And shelved under the wider branches.