You ripped the cover off my paperback book. I turned and looked and protested that you must've made a mistake.  “This is my book, you ripped my book, not your book.” You looked up from your position, seated on the floor, to me seated on the bed and said “it’s okay, I just wanted it to look like mine, see?” and held up your copy reassuringly, cover absent from its mangled spine. You held up your copy and offered it with all its tarnished pages and sweat-smudge ink stains. I took a breath—like an injured kid the moment after a fall, the moment before wailing, the moment before blood—that gulp of air before it manifests.