Fuel
Even at this late date, sometimes I have to look up the word "receive." I received his deep and interested gaze. A bean plant flourishes under the rain of sweet words. Tell what you think—I'm listening. The story ruffled its twenty leaves. * Once my teacher set me on a high stool for laughing. She thought the eyes of my classmates would whittle me to size. But they said otherwise. We'd laugh too if we knew how. I pinned my gaze out the window on a ripe line of sky. That's where I was going.
From Fuel. Copyright © 1998 by Naomi Shihab Nye. Published by BOA Editions, Ltd. Used by permission of the publisher.