Guest post for Strangled by Simile by Kelley Kaye

I’ve always felt that books can save lives. Whatever it is that’s going on in your life, there’s a book for it, something out there that will teach you, heal you, inspire you or shelter you. 

For me, the shelter aspect was key. The young version of Kelley was a total nerd, forty years before nerds became cool. I hated sports, sucked at foursquare, and did really well in school—thought knowing how to spell was the awesomest. Translation: big ol’ geek. The playground was not a respite for me; rather a black hole. I only wanted to escape back into the classroom, where I felt much more surefooted, or, escape into a book, where I felt…indomitable. Into a world I controlled by a turn of the page. I can still picture myself, propped on the playground curb, one skinny leg stretched out to one side, with the book splayed open on the concrete. Catty little girls or thoughtless little boys took a back seat in this world, where space travel is as easy as a Sunday drive, telepathy is real, and if you want it, the good guy always wins. It saved my life.

As a teacher, my motto was “If you don’t like to read, you just haven’t found the right book yet.” I still believe it, even though I’ve been trying for over twenty years now to find the right one for my husband. I’ll keep trying.

But for a lot of my past students, the old adage rings true: take Elijah, who as a freshman hadn’t read a book since fifth grade, hated the idea of books, but after experiencing the motto–and the persuasiveness-AKA-bossiness–of teacher Kelley, he found his groove in a Dean Koontz book, and by the end of his senior year had finished 30 of them. Same thing happened with Brian, though for him his groove was Harlan Coben.

I don’t know if these two example students would be dead if they’d never found a love for reading, but I know I would be. The article I posted at the beginning of my guest post talks about literature as a lifesaver more in terms of big world issues being better understood, disseminated and dealt with through books, which is maybe a more literal way it saves lives. 

But no matter how you look at it, for a lot of us, books are akin to breathing. 

 Books are a lifesaver for me. How about for you?

I wrote this poem early in my teaching career, when I tried to do all their assignments and use mine as examples. I’m not a very good poet, but since the subject is so personal, it was pretty therapeutic to write. 😊

The Edge of the Playground
 

  I sit there.
 

 One leg stretched across the curb,
 one foot off the edge
 of my concrete nightmare.
      As if
 I could run away from
      recess.
 

  The teacher always shoos us
 out of
 the classroom (my comfort
                 my world)
 to the paved and whitelined
 

 foursquare-tether-handball horror,
 where I play
 at being
    unchosen
       uninvited
           un-existing.
 

  
 Little boy whoops and
 Evil girl giggles
 mingle with the stench of oil-based
 asphalt.
 

 I see the heat rise off the cement
 
 in waves
 
 shattered by palms slapping at the
 
 leather
 
 spheres
 
  that I cannot smell
  and will never catch.
 

  
 A rubber ball zings past my
         head,
 and a derogatory childcruel screech
         forces me to bury
 myself further in my
         book.
 

  I close my heart
 and revisit my very own fictional planet
 until it is over,
 and I can go back inside.
 

  
 But recess
       undauntingly
           and perpetually comes again
 the next day
 

 And every day after that.
 
 Until I am big enough to know
 
 that recess goes away,
 
 and my planet, after all,
 

 doesn’t.
 
KKB 8/17/98

Learn more about Kelley Kaye at kelleykayebowles.com. Want more author news? If so, click here to read more Behind the Story interviews from your favorite authors.