Sharon M. Draper

Ashes don't necessarily signify an end

Words have always swirled around me like snowflakes-each one delicate and different, each one melting untouched in my hands.

Words.I__ surrounded by thousands of words. Maybe millions. Cathedral. Mayonnaise. Pomegranate.Mississippi. Neapolitan. Hippopotamus.Silky. Terrifying. Iridescent.Tickle. Sneeze. Wish. Worry.Words have always swirled around me like snowflakes__ach one delicate and different, each one melting untouched in my hands.Deep within me, words pile up in huge drifts. Mountains of phrases and sentences and connected ideas. Clever expressions. Jokes. Love songs.From the time I was really little__aybe just a few months old__ords were like sweet, liquid gifts, and I drank them like lemonade. I could almost taste them. They made my jumbled thoughts and feelings have substance. My parents have always blanketed me with conversation. They chattered and babbled. They verbalized and vocalized. My father sang to me. My mother whispered her strength into my ear.Every word my parents spoke to me or about me I absorbed and kept and remembered. All of them.I have no idea how I untangled the complicated process of words and thought, but it happened quickly and naturally. By the time I was two, all my memories had words, and all my words had meanings.But only in my head.I have never spoken one single word. I am almost eleven years old.

Thoughts need words. Words need a voice.

I learned to dream through reading, learned to create dreams through writing, and learned to develop dreamers through teaching. I shall always be a dreamer.

Maybe I'm not so different from everyone else after all. It's like somebody gave me a puzzle, but I don't have the box with the picture on it. So I don't know what the final thing is supposed to look like. I'm not even sure if I have all the pieces.

I love the smell of my mother__ hair after she washes it.I love the feel of the scratchy stubble on my father__ face before he shaves.But I__e never been able to tell them.

There is an unseen river of communication that forever flows -- dark and powerful.

I believe in me. And my family does. And Mrs. V. It's the rest of the world I'm not so sure of.