Bookshelves are like apartment complexes,
with woody browns and dusty greys that they
just won’t let you paint over.

Rick Riordan and J. K. Rowling live with
their best friend, Cassandra Clare,
in the penthouse,
because we all had great childhood loves
filled with library-book paper cuts
and worn and scotch-taped pages.

Tolkien is merely an elevator ride below
and Austen is only a cheap oak door away,
because they are as dramatic as pre-teen girls were about Justin Bieber,  
and traveling to Mordor and
loving Mr. Darcy
is basically the same anyway.

But Frost and Dickinson live across the hall from
Hughes and Homer,
because everyone stops for death and
roads less traveled by,
and even though no one ever saw Emily,
they all thought they were very popular.

The bottom floor is filled with sundry residents
that no one sees as they come and go.
They just hear the dogs barking and doors slamming,
(Old Man Shakespeare wants them to leave him alone.)
but every teen fiction novel has a Romeo and Juliet story
and a broken boy and a dog.

And so if bookshelves are like apartment complexes?
Where will I live, and
could I even be
a resident?