For kids who want glasses,
the places we elope with ourselves
and how I learned to that love is how
much you read to me.

When I was in third grade I remember all the 
words in thick books 
being a little blurry-- fuzzy-- smudged
charcoals-- mumbled voices of
grandparents from their tombstones
or from their jars of ashes in the attic
-- tell me stories--
tell me word stories-- read to me
and spell out love in other people's alphabets--
tell me that we were once Native Americans
and that we were once people who told stories
only with our lips and we forgot what
kissing was because it was only another
way of passing stories-- passing my stories
to your stories-- do you speak my
language even though reading has only ever
been a smudge-- cough-- a word
caught in your throat like pizza crusts
we shared from crossed legs when the television
only played DvDs
-- and I liked
the pictures in books because I've always been a child
who writes their own stories-- sees their 
own stories outlined page crinkle-- distorts words
in to the arches of a red-brick castle--
I've drawn pictures in every margin 
I've ever touched--
We learn to paint with our tongue and
use those muffled letters to 
see through other people's irises--
the reflection of thick glasses
in May when we stood beside the bumper
of the jeep.

I painted my own wedding
from the hymnal of a picture book that didn't
have to be about pizza or the 
written words the author wasted on me
-- I didn't want
to wear a dress-- I want to link my own
pinkies together and say 
I do
I do 
I do believe in the stories I tell myself--
And the act of reading had made us whole
my own tongue was all I needed-- no 
I'm not selfish. I'm eternal--
And in third grade when they gave me glasses
I didn't know much about sex other than that it felt good
but I did know that nothing is more erotic 
than the places we invent to elope to with our
own pinkies linked--

The glasses they gave me didn't change anything--
words weren't thumb smudged but they
were mumbled by the voice of my own brain
and I said- I said with my short cypress 
tongue-- I said with my tongue that paints 
in the margins-- I said with my tongue
that has been trying to learn the language of men
by kissing them and sharing pizza crusts--
I said 

Read to me.