A Reader

Take her, for instance, as she sits,
her legs folded beneath her
on the couch’s worn brown corduroy,
presently transfixed by the window’s
rainy striations and fingering absently
the olive weave cover of the book
on her lap, its pages splayed like
a gaping mouth—can she realize she
is its aspiration? See her lift her chai latte
as if she recognized no peril.  Yes,
in a moment she’ll recall herself
to the proper page, oblivious to its
subtle oddities—the improbable persons
and seductive worlds—arranged invisibly
against her, yet she will remain
as mindless of these things as
of the years behind her strewn with books
like gravestones marking prior lives.

(Photo Credit: Erich Ferdinand)

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