Today I touch the spines of the books
I have saved—run my hands over
shelves and shelves of poems
and stories and teachings and text books,
some I have never read, some
that have made a home in me.
I touch them as if to touch is to love,
as if the books themselves could feel
the enormous gratitude I have for the ways
their words have changed my life.
Touching them, I touch the days
I’ve spent curled up in couches and beds,
transported into other realms
of loss and belonging. I touch the longing
in me to be known, to be seen, to be heard,
to have a story worth telling, a story
worth living. I touch the fear that I am not enough,
and the hope that it is not too late
and the steadying pulse of the moment.
And the moment, generous as it is,
reaches out with its invisible hands
and touches me back, touches me here
as I stand by the shelves, touches
all the stories I tell myself, touches
the one who’s left as the stories fall away.