Alone

Maddie adores the library and views it as her “book church.” However, she is tired of fiction because the protagonists always triumph with the help of teammates, which makes her sad about her own reality. The stories are also too neat and resolved, unlike her own real life, which is continually “unraveling.” Rather than Odysseus himself, she feels more like Penelope, weaving while waiting for Odysseus to come home.

Maddie disliked poetry in school, but she now enjoys the library’s poetry books because they show her people’s interior thoughts. She thinks maybe one day she could write poems about her own experience and share them with a community. She enjoys Emily Dickinson’s poetry, especially the metaphor of hope as a bird that lives inside a person. However, this metaphor also worries Maddie. If hope is a bird, it could fly away.

Maddie finds a poetry book by Mary Oliver, whose face is on the cover. Maddie enjoys a poem about how it’s important to observe nature and enjoy life because it’s ultimately short. Maddie wonders if her own family might be dead.