i laid my head on their porch / you can go to sleep now/ I think i’m leaking.
1.
I laid my head on their porch.
Rows upon rows, they stood in silence.
Bodies wrapped in covers.
Spines bearing strange symbols.
Insides coded with the same strange signs and symbols.
They have names.
At least, I think.
Some of them carry the same symbols on their backs.
Are they from the same tribe?
Is it the same entity, in different forms?
Have I found the secrets of the world
Yet to be discovered?
Do they ever open?
Do they open themselves?
And when?
And for whom?
Are they the elders of this planet?
Ancient, dusty, but alive with memory.
2.
You can go to sleep now.
Books.
It’s books, right?
Books is what you’re called?
I’ll read from you.
I mean, to you.
I mean, I’ll open you
So I can read you to sleep,
So I can read you,
To you?
Wait.
If I read from you to you,
And lend it my voice,
Does it mean you can read me too?
When your words crawl into me
Like tiny moving creatures,
And roll from my lips
Into the gesture of a story being told,
Does that make me a book?
Wait.
Who is holding whom here?
Who is reading whom here?
Who is the receiver here?
When I read to you, your eyes close.
When I read in you, my eyes open.
I turn your page,
And you turn something in me.
I open the first page.
It is coded.
Help me out here books,
What do the symbols
L . O . V . E
mean?
3.
I think I’m leaking.
Words pour out of me,
Spill onto the floor,
Climb the shelf like vines.
Every spine opens an eye.
Opens a mouth.
They all hum the same code:
L.O.V.E.
L.O.V.E.
L.O.V.E.
I say it out loud.
Again and again.
The atmosphere changes
The shelves shift.
Something opens
Not a door, not a page,
Something else.
The letters start to move.
They peel off from the paper
And circle me like small white creatures,
Pressing themselves against my skin.
I think the room is breathing faster.
I think I am the room.
A voice falls out of one of you, saying:
“The girl has no particular beauty, nor does she look like one particular girl; there is something about her, something both simple and eternal. I turn to her and say: WHAT?! Do you say Moby Dick isn’t a good book? That is so silly! She opens her eyes and smiles, and both of us understand that I said what I said only to arouse a certain relationship between us.” ( quoted from Life as a Parable from Pinhas Sadeh)
I think I am inside it now.
I think the shelves are lungs.
I think the dust is dreaming.
Did she just smile at me?
The girl from the book.
Or maybe it was me
Written on her page.
Wait.
Who is the story now?
I turn the page and find myself
Standing between the letters.
They whisper:
This is how we open
I whisper back:
This is how we love.
