Make the Letters Stop Dancing

I'm dyslexic. Very dyslexic. And for years, no one knew it. To keep up in school I had to find strategies that would help me keep up with the world around me. Reading was a challenge because the letters danced. Here's the story:

Make the Letters Stop Dancing

When my mom first opened books

across my lap for quiet looks

the pictures dazzled at a glance

and every word got up and danced.

The “T” and “H” spun with the “E”

and all for the delight of me

but they would not be still enough

for me to learn to read the stuff.

They would not sit on the line

so I stopped them with my mind

imagining them spatially

I sucked them down with gravity.

They quivered on the sentence shelf

till I could read them all myself -

And when I finished paragraphs

I let them all back up to dance.

Andrea Boff Sutton © 2009