My sister is reading Dracula
and I see her
batting her face against the pages
like a bird into a glass window
The writing is dense,
and it takes all her patience to pull wisdom from it
She says that she read it so violently
that she expected it to howl in pain,
that she drove her sharp thumbs through its breast
and licked its inky blood from her fingers
You can watch her now,
with her nose in the book,
slurping in its words,
surrendering herself 2 it
Reading is nourishment
It is the third unacknowledged human necessity:
food, water and literature.