My Dream Person

By Willa Beck / New York City

The author in her kitchen laboratory

When I am older, I imagine myself as someone flying in space,

with streaming red hair.  Just landed on the moon,

all excited to see what adventure comes up next.

Singing, dreaming, jumping.

Right now, I like to feel like an astronaut.

Close your eyes and imagine that you were in space,

that you were an astronaut, flying from star to star,

deep brown eyes, and dark red hair. 

Waiting to see what adventure awaits you.

You can open your eyes now. 

Or me in a science lab inventing the best invention ever

and inventing the invention that still awaits.

Test tubes, mixing bottles.

Thinking like Albert Einstein, flying like Mae Jemison. 

Waiting to see what awaits me.

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Willa Beck, who is 7, is a 2nd grader at PS 87 in Manhattan.  She asked her grandparents for roller skates for Hanukkah and taught herself to roller skate. Other than roller skating, Willa enjoys biking, ice skating, rollerblading, and scootering. When she grows up, she wants to be a roller-skating astronaut. She wants to roller skate on the moon.