Ruthie Poem by Jenny Kalahar

At four-and-a-half she would tell fantastic stories
Claiming she was reading her brothers' dreams at night
Insisting her weird and hilarious tales were theirs
Taking no credit for the visions she described

She was silent so much of the day
That we came to know her primarily through her breakfast tales
We watched her fork as it separated eggs and potatoes
To help her illustrate which way the red mice ran
A tiny finger in her milk was an elephant
drinking from a purple pond
Her flowery paper napkin fluttering to the floor
was a kite-winged golden bird at dawn
And jellied toast became a magic carpet
floating on the evening's silver clouds

At age five she asked to learn to read and write
She would never tire of her lessons with that fat pencil or a crayon stub
It tickled her that a baby "j" had a dot but the daddy "J" did not
And that the letter "y", if you didn't look at it
sounded exactly like a question

By the age of six she was really writing
But that writing began to silence her again
Her constant companions, her notebooks, heard endlessly from her
But the breakfast table was dull
And even though her eyes still darted
Between her buttered French toast and the syrup bottle
Every story was saved for those intimate blank pages instead

Her brothers would sometimes ask
"What did I dream last night, Ruthie? Where did I go? "
But her answer was merely a secret smile
She wouldn't tell
She refused to say
Even as her littlest brother turned red-faced and nearly cried at the loss
Not wanting his breakfast after such a cruel denial

By age ten she was beautiful, but pale and thin and delicate
Her fork stopped moving
She didn't eat
Her hands stayed balled tight
Her feet began to give way too many times
Her eyes forgot to close or forgot to open
You couldn't tell anymore if she was creating -
Her sweet face just went blank

Desperate, I dug through her drawers, under her dolls and in her closet
I gathered her writings by the armful
And as I tried to feed her breakfast in bed -
soft yellow eggs that she mostly refused
I made her listen to her own stories
Trying and trying to remind her of who she really was
Starting with the messiest scribbled sentences I could find
And reading forward in time as her penmanship matured on the pages
I told her about her very own rhinoceros, fat and blue
under his rhinestone saddle
About those trips on asteroids they took to the planet Corn Flake
Where the spider kings ruled atop their cereal box thrones
I read about her best friend, a motorcycle-riding fairy named Herman
Who would grant wishes only on Sundays, at ten in the morning
if it was raining
And only if those wishes were for very nice things

On and on I read, willing her listen
Watching her eyes for recognition, for a spark of impish light
I fed all of it to her even when she took too little food
Until I got to the story about a little blonde girl named Ruth
Who had sought out a terrible witch in the haunted woods
A witch who had given her a potion to make eating impossible
A potion to make her atone for the loss of her mother's favorite necklace
That Ruth had dropped, quite on purpose
into some forgotten puddle of mud

And so, finally understanding
From that day on I fed her the antidote of forgiveness
Sprinkled understanding like sugar on her pancakes
Mixed mercy into orange juice as I read to her
About a retired Florida swamp monster named Harry
About an antique hat that changed form as it passed from head to head
And about an undersea dragon who was lonely for the dryness of fire

I then ended each tale with my own, true story of forgiveness
Until she believed me and her eyes finally looked steadily into mine
Until her mouth chewed faster
Until she held the fork herself
To eat and to divide the eggs and potatoes as I read
Until her legs grew strong enough for her to run away from me
Back into the real, green-grass world
And then fast, fast back into my open arms again
Her bright eyes smiling up at me with that familiar secret smile
And as we walked where the woods were never haunted
She told me fantastic, believable stories
All about my dreams