Pages of Her: Lost and Found in Verse

In a nook, she found her haven,

Where words weave worlds, kind and craven.

Bound in leather, scents of must,

Pages turned with gentle trust.

With every line, she sank deeper,

As the world's cries grew steeper.

In tales of love, magic, and fights,

She lost her days, she lost her nights.

Amidst the spines, a soul encased,

In paper walls, the world effaced.

Forsaking sun for candle's glow,

Her reality, now just for show.

As bindings crack and pages wear,

Her eyes reflect a distant stare.

A vice of verse, a silent plea,

In books she hides, in words she's free.

But life outside, with all its scars,

Calls to her 'twixt the lines, 'twixt the stars.

Yet she turns away, lets reality slide,

In the vice of her tales, she chooses to hide.

I went to an art festival yesterday at the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden. I came across a piece, and I interpreted it in a way I don't think the artist intended, but that is the beauty of art, right? It's subjective. As I was staring at this sculpture I thought of myself and in that quiet moment in my thoughts, the idea of a poem was born. A beautiful tapestry of words and feelings and whispers from my soul started to tell a deeper story. Not of a sculpture, but of a woman who falls deeper and deeper into her vice of reading. This is a journey and dissection of my latest poetic creation.

The "nook" is a symbolic term of what I consider to be my safe haven. As a child that suffered sexual abuse and then as a child who was relentlessly bullied throughout my elementary years my safe haven were books. I always found comfort and safety in fictional worlds that were created by words. It helped me escape the more difficult realities of my life and I was able to sink deeply into my literary hideaways. As a child I was easily taken into the worlds of the authors, their stories so vivid I could create entire worlds in my mind and completely disassociate from the one I was in.

I went to a small town public school so our library was full of books that had been loved by many. The big ones in the back, the encyclopedias, bound in leather with scents of must. That's where I fell in love with the smell of old books. The softness of the worn out bindings, the aging of the paper. Even to this day when I walk into a library or a book store and get that distinct smell of parchment and ink, my body releases the same amount of endorphins that one releases when they get a hug from someone they love.

As much as I love books and I love the escapism that they provide me I wanted to write a poem about the tragedy of losing yourself in vices, even ones as safe as books. There are times, depending on the books I'm reading, where I return with a bit of myself gone. I think that is true for most books, some take pieces of you while filling them in with something else. This is where you start to see the turn in the poem "lost her days, lost her nights. It references that as the outside world gets louder and uglier she dives further into her books. So much so that she starts losing track of time and reality and the responsibilities that come with her real life. The poem weaves how her chosen vice becomes a kind of prison. This is where one of my favorite phrases came to mind "a soul encased, in paper walls". Our protagonist starts to prefer her artificial light over the natural light of the sun. As her connection to the real world starts to weaken "her reality now just for show" transitions into "crack and pages wear" which I intended to symbolize both the physical wear of the books and the wear on the protagonist as she continues to retreat into her reading.

"The distant stare" identifies the disassociation as she is more than likely in her fictional worlds instead of her own. Her only freedom is in the "vice of verse". Meaning she has devoted her soul to the written word that she is unable to find freedom or happiness in any other place than in between the pages of her book, and in that is the true tragedy.

The real world, with all its scars calls out to her, but she continues to chose her book. In reality it is in living our lives and having our own real world tragedies, it getting wounded, and healing and scaring, that is the beauty. The beauty of the real world is that we can live a life worth writing about and instead of living and creating her own adventures she hides away in her home with her books. Instead of living she reads about fictional characters living. It is an ode to the beauty and danger of using fiction as an escape.

And all of this was inspired by one sculpture. I'm very proud of myself and my poem, and I hope you enjoyed it as well.