Now A Major Motion Picture

I’ve left myself the bright and new copy
And swaddled this, a battered, cheap volume,
A changeling child, beneath the slick giftwrap,
Its corners bent and pages blunt, soft (countless
Small impacts may have done as much). Margins
Bear stains of fascination—whorls marking
Pressed fingers brushed with dust of lost days—and
Phone numbers fast-scrawled (please don’t call any).
And should you smooth a finger past pages
Whose crispness faded many lost places
Hence, might you feel the weight of days I bore
This book with me, the cares that I suffered,
Absorbed by tireless story from aching
Monotony, spent work, fatigued visions?

It’s not a gift edition. This book holds
My own addition, written ‘twixt these lines:
A chapter’s worth of human life, once mine.