Cobbled bits of juvenile senility

Awkward, bespectacled, with more of a real crush
on Hamlet and his all-too-angsty worldly wisdom
than any real flesh-and-blood boy.

My parents never worried about what I'd be up to on weekends,
never wondered whether or not I was doing well in school.
It was a granted: I was the nerdy child, the socially uncomfortable one,
the one who never swore and never broke a rule and never pissed off
anyone.

Afraid of being too comfortable in what I was good at.
Too modest to believe in my own abilities sometimes.
Loving language and the many ways writers bent the letters
to their meanings, playing with words like they were soap bubbles;
so easily created, so quick to drift off into the world.

I cheered on underdogs like Harry Potter
and felt for outcasts like Dustfinger,
I understood Meursault's confusion and longed to
stand before his jury to make his claim for him.
Well.
The world of fantasy was more than just a passion;
it was my home, and I loved the stories in books
and got to know their characters better
than I did my own peers.

I memorized Macbeth's soliloquy hoping for tomorrow
a better tomorrow, and a better tomorrow
and finished reading Lord of the Rings
just so I could go see it in theatres.
I wanted to slap Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth silly
and shove Lydia off a cliff.
I lived vicariously through Jo's escapades and Anne's stubbornness,
and locked myself in my room to write and write and write -
or occasionally, rage over trigonometry I never quite understood.

In grade 10 I discovered Coldplay and marvelled at how
a song about the colour of piss could be so terribly touching.
A Rush of Blood to the Head, Parachutes, X&Y,
I played them as if they were the anthem to my high school days.

High school creeps up on me as if it were yesterday
and I feel a strange affection for the naive little girl
in mismatched clothing who wanted nothing more
than to date Hamlet and just maybe
meet a hobbit who also knew Dobby
and would let me take a holiday
if only I could find Platform 9 3/4.