Climbing Into Books

I spent my summer worrying,
everything distorted, inverted, wrong,
but when I read,
everything else fell away:
I climbed up into books
like an addict,
like the child I once was,
stealing minutes, hours,
reading whole books in a day—
lightweight, insignificant, unimportant books
that would never lead to clever witticisms
to share with friends
after supper.
Instead they saved me.
Slowly I came back down
from their trivial, frivolous heights
to sit here at my computer,
autumn on its way,
almost myself again.

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Mary Soon Lee was born and raised in London, but has lived in Pittsburgh for thirty years. She is a Grand Master of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Poetry Association, and three-time winner of both the AnLab Readers' Award and the Rhysling Award. Her latest poetry book, "How to Navigate Our Universe," answers vexing questions such as "How to Surprise Saturn" and "How to Survive a Black Hole." She hides her online presence with a cryptically named website (marysoonlee.com and an equally cryptic Twitter account (@MarySoonLee).