Do you know me
Can you claim to unfold my tattered edges
Bindings held together with stubborn lashings
Years upon years repaired
Reinforced
What stories faded in my pages
What comedy laughs in scattered chapters
What tragedy scores dog-eared corners
And then what too is unwritten
Between each line
Softly spoken tales of triumph
And Joy
Between each word
A cry for help
Tears
Between every letter
The essence of me
Human
Fallible
Prose
I know myself to be
A cautious description engraved over time
A daring thriller scribbled in haste
An autobiographical masterpiece of emotion
Art in so few words
To read me is to turn each page
Pealing back the good with the bad
Blowing away the years of settled dust
Layers of sediment obscuring hidden verse
Long forgotten psalms
Better forgotten signs
Secrets
And again I ask
Do you know me
Has light dimmed so much I cannot be read
Has the writing on the wall distracted you
From what lies behind my ragged cover
Have the words seen edits
No one can decipher
Code
The challenge therefore is
To read the unwritten
To glean hope from the unknown
To consume every nuance
To simply
Live inside this shell
Keeper of my life
Lay me at your bedside to consume my every moment
Until the end
The very last word of the very last chapter
On the very last page
The story is my life
In a book with no end