Books
The shelves are lined with voices frozen in wood
Turned out covers scream for attention
Touch me
Open me
Bring my tongue to life with your inner voice; your inner ear
Take me into your mind
Where I will become part of you
Carried like an ember of memory
An invented life lived in dimensions that cannot be measured
Like love and hate and sorrow and elation.
There are so many speaking to me
Too many to hold onto any of them
Who has time for all these makers
Lovers, murderers, friends, teachers, thinkers, predictors, nurses, reconteurs
I resist the feeling that my own story is diminished
By this ocean of words
But I can’t stand too long
Without feeling like it’s vain and useless
To throw my own wooden voice
On this store of Babel