bestseller

You’re the one i can’t put down
That keeps me up at night

if i could ever set you back on a shelf
you would have pride of place on the coffee table
or mantle
Or bedside, my dear

you should live in mahogany or richest oak
encased in velvet
your title embossed in gold

i would trace your spine as i wandered past
my fictional non-fiction fiction lover
i would like to bind you to my side

your limited edition smiles
incite a mad search for earlier editions and rare re-prints

you would open warm in my hands
pages and pages of you to pour over
text to curl around on floor, chair, bed, grass, sand, street and earth

i would read you again and again
until i’d committed your every word to memory
and quote you more than three times a day

you would become part of my vernacular
my speech as permanently altered as my lips
infused with your authorship

yet between your lines is an awful truth
it is not in the footnotes or appendix
and it is this:

remembering every sentence
every strategically placed comma,
curved tight like your arm around my waist when you fell asleep around me,
does nothing to prevent others from reading you

if I could study everything in those eyes
and covet each of your careful paragraphs
This story would still
come to an end

i suppose that was your reason for leaving halfway through a chapter

my bestseller
selling us short