Collected Works

Before I learned to read, the

pages of my days flipped by

like so many bedtime stories,

familiar and listened to, half

asleep in my cozy bed.

Once the words of my life

began to make sense, there

hardly seemed time to read.

I flicked through the pages

with impatient fingers,

snatching a paragraph here

and there, looking for the

good parts, pouring over

the juicy bits even as they

were being written.

Then for a time there were a lot

of legal documents (oh so boring),

dry pages covered with the formal

language of property and bequests

necessary to tidy up the lives that

were too quickly ending all around...

...leaving me suddenly alone in a quiet

library with shelves of silent books,

volumes bound in leather, and bound

as well in paper torn and stained.

There’s an empty space waiting for the

unfinished manuscript I hold in my hand,

but now that I have paused to consider

the enormity of that slim void, I am

almost too fearful to write.