Lunchbox Poems

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

might unfold at your touch. You follow them into

the blur of the world. Into whoever you’re going to be.

DORIANNE LAUX