Wakeful and aware of my feet against the floor,
Alive in a vast labyrinth of precious tomes,
their pages soft beneath my fingertips,
Their covers defensively misleading.

How beautiful, really, to be able to read them,
Be it a chapter, a page, or even a few lines.
Reading deep into precious texts
that don’t know they’re being read.

Unaware of the stories, written out in neurons, told through fluttered lashes,
And the twitch of a nose,
Pictures painted by the wide sweeping motions of searching irises,
blind to their own vibrant illustrations.

Each story searches for its conclusion
within the pages of another,
Trying to navigate itself through an index
That is not its own.

Perhaps someday I’ll find such beauty in my own weathered pages,
when my spine has split and my text has faded,
When I am a complete person built of indented paragraphs,
an entire soul typed out in times new roman.