If I were a banned book, I’d tell you to challenge authority and question everything and demand answers. I’d tell you that the 1 percent is nothing without the rest of us labeling the 1 percent the 1 percent. I’d teach you to cook anarchy and embrace diversity and kiss your same-gender lover in public.
If I were a banned book, I’d let you ask me about sex and growing up, and I’d sing the caged-bird songs, and I’d be each of the nobodies who would answer to the name nobody. I’d teach you to sail a raft and swim against tides and dance in towns where dances aren’t danced.
If I were a banned book, I’d be the light on long-past midnight in your attic, and I’d be the cauldron around which dance witches and in which fire burns and toil and trouble doubles.
If I were a banned book, I’d bring flowers to the grave of a mouse and I’d teach you that forever sometimes means forever and sometimes means less than forever but always means what forever will mean to you, then, at that moment.
If I were a banned book, I’d be the secrets you write in your diary and I’d be the lies you write in your diary and I’d be the truths that you wish weren’t truths that you write in your diary.
If I were a banned book, I’d be cupboards and wardrobes and the hidden door under a stairwell in which lives the boy who lived. I’d be beanstalks and magic shoes and godmothers, winged and otherwise. I’d be potion poultice poetry. I’d be words wings wizardry.
If I were a banned book, I’d dance with insects outside of an enormous peach, and I’d race wolves in woods overgrown with ivy and snow. I’d be the substitute teacher who’d let you smoke cigarettes outside. I’d be the comic book hidden behind your history book.
If I were a banned book, I’d urge you to go ask Alice, and wrinkle time, and ride in talking cars. Everyday, I’d crown a new king fly-lord, and everyday would be a good day to say goodbye to something.
If I were a banned book, I’d be the Pigman and I’d be a Wallflower and I’d be the story of Sleeping Beauty, written under a penname. I’d kill mockingbirds and I’d talk about the things we talk about when we talk about things like death and love and sex and forever, which, as I already would have taught you, sometimes means less than forever but always mean what forever will mean to you, then, at that moment.”
William Henderson
