When our lives are shelved
somewhere between our children’s toasts
to our memory and some Dewey Decimal account
of our faults and our finer stumblings toward grace,
let us be books beside each other.
Our bindings will rib each other’s
until our leather bound covers wear away
in flakes of laughter, while
that little wine we left behind
is now full-chilled and breathing well.
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Let those who then raise their glasses recall us.
They step up the stairs to see the reading lamps’ glow
on a children’s book on those young ones’ chests.
And all breathe in the hug of a story
where we live in its retelling.
This article appears in July 2017 Issue.
