Your Favorite Librarian

Awkward boy. Poor boy. Glasses swallow his pimpled face yet hang down a

Bulbous nose, as weird wiry buttons and pins on his jacket

Crowd out the

Denim. He slides his book stack

Evenly across the chipped Formica circulation desk

For checkout:

“Greek Myths.” “Perseus Revisited.” “Osiris Laughed.”

He clears his throat, but voice still cracks,

“I really liked the last one you recommended. The one about

Jupiter, Zeus, Thor and thunder.” She smiles back

Kindly, from the other side of the circulation desk.

Library Sciences didn’t quite prep her for this—

Matching humans with books, when maybe what the kid

Needed most was other kids. How to tell him

One day there will be others, like him,

People not

Quite like the

Rest.

Still, youth’s social wheel churned, chewed, and spit out

The bones; an ugly game to

Umpire. “Ah yes, well after these, we’ll have to introduce you to some mythic underdogs,

Venerable rogues and the like,” she

Winks. A honk outside resounds with the beep of the

Xerox machine in the back: his grandma’s old beater Buick out front.

“You got it!” He smiles, all buck teeth, waves bye, books in arms.

Zany boy. Lucky boy, with the whole world ahead, in his hands.