Mama told you when you were young that people would treat you like a library, come and go as they please, sometimes leaving you a little more empty, sometimes curling up in a corner, immersed in you an ark, strong and safe, for some as they talk over you and leave two by two, fidgeting hands leaving gaps in your armoured rows of memories as they drag fingers along book spines unsettling old and stubborn dust in neat little lines.
Sometimes they will come only to put you back on the shelf in order to move on to some brighter place. You see, your dim warm lights will comfort some and depress others, and that's alright, she said, some will risk it all to stay all night. Still, knowing this, you sit lamplit on the patio buttoned up with regret wine red lips pursed burden on both sleeves tired of the world already at twenty three. She never told you that torn pages and unfinished stories would bleed and hurt like real wounds that some visitors would leave you collapsing behind them, crumbling, folding, the threat of closure looming like an unsatisfactory ending-- she didn't tell you that libraries are also oceans stretching fields and cities burning crashing and fading into bittersweetness and balled fists
she didn't warn you of plot twists like this or what to do when they arise your big moon eyes clouding over like a stormy night in front of living room lights that have turned their back on you or that sometimes peter pan at the window would have more luck than you at getting through people's frosted glass
You have to learn your own fresh start you have your own paintbrush, you have your own heart, So, paint your insides, watch them dry under the new moon. That sinking feeling is just a new room, no bookshelves in it yet.