Re-reading A Wrinkle In Time by Michele Sharpe

To be transported back to childhood

has never been my wish. It didn’t work

for me. I didn’t play. I yearned. I read.

Adulting, I forgot what languid meant,

 

but aging brings it back. This year, I lurk

in bed with favorite books. A Wrinkle, sent

to me at ten when Daddy left. I bawled

with Meg, who’d lost her father to a mission

 

as secret as my dad’s—he’d gone to prison.

I read it in a day back then, and then,

again, again, again. Tonight, I shut

the book, amazed at how my brain recalled

 

each sentence, how I kept its center close,

believing still that love has mattered most.

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Michele Sharpe, a poet and essayist, is also a high school dropout, hepatitis C survivor, adoptee, and former trial attorney. Her essays appear in venues including The Rumpus, Guernica, Catapult, and The Sycamore Review. Recent poems can be found in Lunch Ticket, Poet Lore, North American Review, Stirring, and Baltimore Review.