I want to say I'm an unopened novel on your bookshelf,
but that would mean I'm the Harry Potter series
(if I remember correctly)
and I might be, I wouldn't know -I've never read them,
but I've been in your hands enough to be a bit worn,
and there could've been so many chapters of us
if you had just opened the first book.

I'm an encyclopedia of a subject
you never got interested enough to read;
so much information, so much to learn
but my cover is plain, and my words are complicated
and there's magazines on your brother's dresser
of beautiful girls and little words,
so why would you ever waste time on me?

But I'm a wine-box full of scripted letters never sent,
and you're downing liquor as if to forget something,
and I hope you never try to forget me.

I wish you downed me like you did of that bottle,
but like old-wine, my cork was tight
and you didn't have the patience to open me.
Old wine has more flavour,
at the surface I'm sober;
at the core, I'm drunk.

We could've fallen in love
if we had taken the time to learn each-other;
but we started as strangers, and ended as strangers,
except now I'm left collecting dust on my own shelf.

I've been writing letters to a stranger
I swear I could have loved.

(NJ2014) (© All Rights Reserved)