Young Writers Project: 'Dyslexia'

The letters
drift off the page and
twist themselves into tiny
balls of confusion,
tripping over each other
and swirling into spirals.
I squint in frustration at
the page in the book I’m
trying to read.
Nothing makes sense;
the story doesn’t seem to
captivate me as much as they captivate
my classmates,
all staring at their books,
mouthing the words to themselves
as they get lost in their
own world, that seems
so much better than this one.
But I have no access to that golden world,
for it has high silver gates, and
every time I try to open them they seem
to refuse, jamming and
finding some way to not let me in.
I look around the classroom one more time
and sigh, giving up on
books for a long time after that,
all my life wondering,
what would have happened if the silver gates had opened?