Dedication ( for K )
Mackenzie M ( 7th Grade )
I can remember the day I realized that I was not the main character of my story , can remember the day you packed your memories into moving boxes stripping your house bare of the tales swapped under its roof and our stories , which had intersected for a while , for so long that they seemed to be one , poured onto different pages . I tried to find you in the table of contents but you were in a different book now , and your story no longer shone in black ink on a bone-white page for me to read .
I can remember the day I realized that I might not be a character in your story anymore , that I might be a footnote or a faceless name mentioned once and forgotten , that I may have thought that it was our story , but yours was too much to be contained in my pages . I don ’ t know what direction your story has taken , and I wouldn ’ t recognize it if I-- somehow , in a world less cold and uncharted-- found it again , at a library that time doesn ’ t know by name , at a bookstore , reading over a stranger ’ s shoulder . Your story is no longer mine to read .
I can remember the day I tried to go back a few chapters , to laugh over a joke that only we understood to dance through the world , drunk on foolish courage to sing my part in this beautiful duet . But the song was a solo now , soft and mournful , I ’ d forgotten the steps to the dance , and my laughs sounded too much like crying .
I don ’ t know what paths your story has taken , what roads crafted from paper and ink lie before you , what the flow of your poetry sounds like to my battered ears , but I do know this : if ever I come across your novel in a bookstore , reading over the shoulder of a friend I haven ’ t met yet in a library that time waltzed with but never touched in this world , so cold and uncharted
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