Date A Girl Who Reads

Date a girl who reads.

Date a girl who spends her money on books
instead of clothes.
She has problems with closet space
because she has too many books.
Date a girl who has a list of books
she wants to read,
who has had a library card
since she was twelve.

Find a girl who reads.

You’ll know that she does
because she will always have
an unread book in her bag.
She’s the one lovingly looking over
the
shelves in the bookstore,
the one who quietly cries out
when she finds the book she wants.
You see the weird chick sniffing the pages
of an old book in a second hand book shop?
That’s the reader.
They can never resist smelling the pages,
especially when they are yellow.

She’s the girl reading while waiting
in that coffee shop down the street.
If you take a peek at her mug,
the non-dairy creamer is floating on top
because she’s kind of engrossed already.
Lost in a world of the author’s making.

Sit down.

She might give you a glare,
as most girls who read
do not like to be interrupted.
Ask her if she likes the book.

Buy her another cup of coffee.

Let her know
what you really think of Murakami.
See if she got through
the first chapter of Fellowship.
Understand that if she says she understood
James Joyce’s Ulysses,
she’s just saying that
to sound intelligent.
Ask her if she loves Alice
or she would like to be Alice.

It’s easy to date a girl who reads.
Give her books for her birthday,
for Christmas
and for anniversaries.
Give her the gift of words,
in poetry,
in song.
Give her Neruda, Pound, Sexton, Cummings.
Let her know that you understand
that words are love.
Understand that she knows the difference
between books and reality
but by God,
she’s going to try to make her life
a little like her favorite book.
It will never be your fault if she does.
She has to give it a shot somehow.

Lie to her.
If she understands syntax,
she will understand your need to lie.
Behind words are other things:
motivation, value, nuance, dialogue.
It will not be the end of the world.

Fail her.
Because a girl who reads knows
that failure always leads up to the climax.
Because girls who read understand
that all things will come to end.
That you can always write a sequel.
That you can begin again and again
and still be the hero.
That life is meant to have a villain or two.
Why be frightened of everything
that you are not?

Girls who read understand that people,
like characters, develop.
Except in the Twilightseries.

If you find a girl who reads,
keep her close.
When you find her up at 2 AM
clutching a book to her chest and weeping,
make her a cup of tea and hold her.
You may lose her for a couple of hours
but she will always come back to you.

She’ll talk as if
the characters in the book are real,
because for a while,
they always are.
You will propose on a hot air balloon.
Or during a rock concert.
Or very casually next time she’s sick.
Over Skype.

You will smile so hard
you will wonder why your heart hasn’t burst

and bled out all over your chest yet.
You will write the story of your lives,
have kids with strange names
and even stranger tastes.
She will introduce your children to
the Cat in the Hat and Aslan,
maybe in the same day.

You will walk the winters of
your old age together
and she will recite Keats under her breath
while you shake the snow off your boots.

Date a girl who reads
because you deserve it.
You deserve a girl who can give you
the most colorful life imaginable.
If you can only give her monotony,
and stale hours and half-baked proposals,
then you’re better off alone.
If you want the world
and the worlds beyond it,
date a girl who reads.


Or better yet,
date a girl who writes.

-Rosemarie Urquico-