I asked you to read to me.
(I always ask them to read to me.)
(There's something about the way their fingers flip the pages
and their lips linger on certain letters
and their unique strategies of correcting themselves
when they stutter or mispronounce a word)
(Although your narration was smoother than the cliched flutter of a butterflies delicate wings.)
You agreed to be my raconteur
of the novel I let you borrow
and you painted pictures like no other,
of vivid skies and snowy German cities, all for me.
I couldn't recognize the medium you used at first.
I've seen watercolor landscapes and acrylic abstracts,
but you preferred oil portraits.
You knitted quilts of time passing train rides and hiding in basements.
Your voice was a foreign feel of fabric.
I once laid in satin, and then wool.
You were velvet.
Your head was in my lap while I braided your sheepish curls
and your fingers sheepishly traced patterns on my knee caps
and I could have fallen asleep right there,
easily, perhaps,
had I not been falling for the rise and fall of your breaths
in between cleverly placed asterisks,
chapter titles,
and clumsy kisses.
So tell me, what happens next?