Inscriptions *

Mike’s copy of Loving Each Other

Crack my spine where these love promises made have not been crossed out or taken back. They are merely given away and again. Red ink spelling out questions of a love kept or unkept, resting on shelves, starting small and manageable fires on these pages yellowing between your hands. How long has this love been over or on or not over? Take me home with you; don’t put this relationship back on a shelf, don’t let it gather dust and the cobwebs of spiders. If you take me home, what I have to give will become yours, bought and paid for.

She cracked my spine, wrote out her promises with a red marker. No one else knows how long he kept them in his heart but you now hold the proof in your palms. Did he let her go? Or her love grew so familiar he no longer needed the reminder; her words lived in his chest alongside his heart. Does she still have space there that he carved out for her by expanding, breathing deeply, shoring up walls and laying out a small floor for dancing in moonlight? Maybe she reclines there, alongside his beating, and he didn’t need the reminder anymore because he can recite all of her, word for word.

You keep reading passed “dear Mike” even though you are neither him nor his love, neither to nor the from. I want to give you at least this part of their love.






* This poem was inspired by the inscription I found in a copy of the book _Loving Each Other_ by Leo Buscaglia.