incomprehensible

and when I walk in the door every little face searches mine. dark hair and deep eyes, each girl-like profile. and theres confident voices covering quiet ones, broken english and slurs. and soon theres a five year old boy with greasy hair and long eyelashes against my chest, in my lap, excitedly clasping a spongebob book in our faces. listening closely to my voice, each syllable, "sk-wid-wer-d". so our sentences are choppy, his fervent echo on every word, the storyline incomprehensible, but its never sounded this beautiful. and he laughs at the pictures, counts the characters, the number of words. he looks at me for affirmation and I hope he can't see how excited I am. surely he'd think Im crazy, or maybe he does see it, maybe thats why he burrows so close, keeps turning the pages, keeps searching my face. and the chaos is everywhere. thirty little faces, thirty little people searching and open. and sabee is in the third grade. shy and unassuming. her eyes fall when they meet mine, but two minutes later she's on her knees beside me, waiting patiently, only a brush against my arm. a worn and floppy jungle book in hand. she follows my finger, word to word, line to line, she doesn't need me to read them first, and her eyes grow as the page turns. so many words. but shes smart. like a rare gift, she tunes out the chaos surrounding us. her head against my arm, she sounds out unfamiliar words like "mowgli," "shere khan," "man-cub," her face confused as the sounds come out and she laughs. and suddenly two more voices are reading along with hers. girls, of similar age huddled around me, huddled around her, an off key chorus of storytellers. competing and correcting. and by the end of the night, we're cleaning up books, and broken crayons, hanna montana book bags and batman pencil cases. and sabee isn't shy any longer, dancing around the room, laughing when her eyes meet mine. and I wish I could come here everyday.