Friday, September 9, 2016

Ode to the Bookmarked


On the shelf waiting; anticipating, you've sat for too long old friend
I stuffed the bookmark in your thin off white messages; a promise of hasty return.
But then I went of to other new exciting tomes and left you alone on the shelf.
Not entirely alone, for them content you would be, no I left a promise that turned to a dagger.
As the seasons changed my hand would pass by you again and again, sometimes I'd even place my new friends on top of you. But you endured this indignity, this subjection because of the promise I stuck in your spine.
It said I would return to see where you led. It said we would spend time again.
But as the seasons gave way to a year you knew I wasn't coming back. The wedge in your pages was no longer a promise but a memorial to my disinterest. A rock in a shoe. An unforgettable annoyance. And also a shackle. For as long as my mark is slid between your pages, I have claimed you and no other may have you.
Nearly a decade has passed and you had given up on being anything other than a old maid. There are no best seller lists that bear your name. No zeitgeist compelling the masses to grasp you off the shelf. Dusty with an old piece of shrapnel in your spine. You have long ago given up being excited when my hand reaches near you on the shelf, not once in these years has it found you.
But today it does. My old hands pass you to small hands which trace your gilded title and read it aloud with a sense of awe. A friendly breeze removes the dust, and daintily cracks open your spine. The old mark is removed with swift precision, you're free. You have a new master now, who will read the pages I never bothered with. Who will tell friends about your wondrous secrets and wisdom. Who will allow you to fulfill the mandate of your creation given in a printing press so long ago.
I was a fickle friend, but the loss was mine. Your message I'll never know