This Is A Story About A Girl

I am 12 years old, and I hear people speak.

Their words wash over me, like a wave that catches me off my feet.

I’m in a new country, surrounded by strangers,

And I can’t, for the life of me, understand what they say.

I keep my eyes downcast, feeling pretty bleak,

Cause I feel like I’m drowning, wondering if there’s ever a way,

That I can ever feel like I’m out of the danger.

“Just learn the language,” a voice seems to echo.

I reply in frustration, “Easier said than done.”

Still, despite discouragements and unfamiliar grammar rules, 

I try to learn the language. But it doesn’t feel enough. 

It’s letting a wave crash over me, unable to run. 

Then one morning I find myself in a library at school,

And I pick up a book with pages that are rough. 

It has poems by poets like Robert Frost and Maya Angelou

And Emily Dickinson and John Keats.

I read their words, and for the first time it hits me

That this language is beautiful. Breathtaking.

That between the lines in these sheets

Are ideas and wonders of what it means to be

Alive and human in a world so heart breaking.

I am shy and sometimes I think too much.

The world is large and people are complicated.

I still feel like a stranger sometimes in this new place,

Although a decade has passed since I was new and 12 years old.

But in me now are phrases that I have created, 

And I can finally share thoughts on what binds the human race,

And share the quiet wishes that have crossed my heart’s threshold. 

The words of the poems I read wrap around my heart. 

I’ve learned to love this language I once so feared.

And this feels like forging new paths and seeing new worlds.

It feels like walking to the shore, 

Feeling at peace as the waves come unbarred,

Knowing that I’ll never drown, 

Because I’ve finally learned how to swim.