The sunlight had shifted three times across the living room floor, but the page in front of me hadn’t changed. The Letters, Shapes. The weird lines and curves stacked together like little walls that refused to let me in.
I traced them again with my finger. Very slowly and carefully like it’d make any difference that I'd not learn much on my own. I did it the way Marcus had told me to. d-o-g. Dog. I whispered it under my breath, feeling the sound scrape against my tongue. Then I turned to the next word, the one beneath the picture of a red ball. b-a-l-l. Ball.
The words looked so simple, yet every time I tried to move beyond them, my mind shut down. The letters blurred, my head ached, and the frustration boiled up inside me. By now, the pages were smudged from my fingers pressing down too
