I could live in a book.
Not as a character, but
I could sit on it and fiddle its pages
Flap its cover
Walk on the many worded lines
Tap its bind to say “Hello”
Kiss the colors swirled on the cover
Wrap my arms around its fragility
Nap in-between the pages
Make love on its back cover
Play house on the empty pages
Hopscotch between verbs
Befriend the unusually long words
Hang from the page numbers
Swim the waves between paragraphs
Drink coffee with the periods
Play chess with the commas
Breathe in the years between reads
Cradle its sad themes
Guffaw at its hilarity
Clap at its humility
Cause a riot from its pain
Cancel the end and begin again.
-Zainab Karim
