A dog-eared paperback copy of The Bell Jar smells of poet's ink. Like the smart girl with dishwasher blonde hair who sat in front of me in eighth grade English, always reading, who I never had the nerve to talk to. The scent of her shampoo, 99% pure, as she turned toward the laughter of the popular girls two rows over; her eye in profile, a sapphire dreaming in the pale blushed peach down of her cheek, scrubbed fresh and ready for another night of silent tears no one would understand. Her fingers smell of lead and pencil flesh, as she underscores and annotates every thought and feeling as they glisten, sharp and bright, within the pages of a story she will never bring herself to write. A bound book- blank, wordless- pressed paper dreaming of being trees again, like a garden on fire in Eden's first Spring, where words would light and nest then take to the sky again with her song, with sunlight and starlight and raven black wings.
And I never had the nerve to talk to her.
I hold the book. I breath her in.
Then I leave her on the shelf.
