If he were a book….

An old, leather-bound book with creasy pages and that inky-paper smell.

The yellowed pages that crackle and release secrets with each puff of dust.

He wouldn’t be that book.

But he would be that book in the making.

His leather would be supple and new, shining in the light of day, not by candlelight.

His script would jump off the page, dark and bold, still crisp, not yet bled in or faded.

The pages would slide, smoothly, and instead of resembling the folds of old bark

They would resemble the layers in shale --

Uniform, stacked, wafer-thin.

Even though there would be pages upon pages

Only a small fraction would have been written in.

He’s the kind of book

That no one has yet picked up and taken the time to thumb through

Slowly, savoring the scrawling text and loopy words.

No one has dogeared their favorite pages

Or spent nights poring over the language found there.

No one has yet taken the time to appreciate

The lazy flip of his pages

Or read it so much

That there are finger smudges on all of the edges.

Sure, he’s been picked up a few times --

But some decided

That he wasn’t their kind of book,

Or they tried to hold on too tightly to the fact that he was one.

They didn’t understand that it’s not the pages

Or the leather

Or the smell

That makes a book.

Those are all very nice things, for sure,

But it’s the words

that leave you in silence

When the last page turns

And the story ends.

 

And I don’t presume to be so lucky

As to be there when the story does end.

But I hope

That I can read that book

And I hope that some of my fingerprints make their way

Onto his story.