I like to touch
Books

They have soft pages and silk rough raw right wrong revolution words
They cut kings and conquerors and ideas and eras like the axes that severed them from their bark-skinned lives
They chop at the skulls of wise coward sedentary spirit beings
They float like moths as they burn (and they have burned)

They know
They, ink and glue and spine and leaf, live dead paper lives

Books don’t mind the feel of my raw nibbled hands
Chewed down to stubs
As they graze through their insides with scratchy fingers
My fingers feel light