Klaus & Jane PREVIEW

Stories are supposed to begin

with once upon a time,

but mine is not

so simple.

I can’t trace its beginning

to any one moment—

Except, no, I can.

It was the moment when I woke up,

still tired

from tossing in my bed,

because the mattress had bugs,

and the new children were always crying

through the night.

I had fallen asleep shivering,

because Anne took my blanket.

Anne always took my blanket.

But another blanket was on me,

and I’d have never known whose,

but for the patch on the right-hand corner.

That was a patch I stared at,

tracing the design of the wildflower

for hours when I was sick.

It was the blanket that lay

day after day

on the bed across from mine.

It belonged to the boy

with the brown hair

and the black spectacles

who sat in the corner and read.

The boy who,

at some point,

had given me his blanket,

in the middle of a winter night.

My story begins there,

I think,

in the corner with him

and his books.

♡

KLAUS & JANE is available here.