The Difference Between Ayacucho and Copley Square

If there isn't a name for the feeling 
that ripples through your body 
when you walk  through libraries,
then there should be.

(And it's not Plantar Fasciitus.)

Because every time I find myself  
walking through these spaces it would 
seem that my words hang suspended
like string of lights, but my hearts beats as
furiously as it did when our timelines accidentally
criss-crossed for the first time.
And the second.
And the third.

And I don't know whether the blame is with the books
or with my breath when I grow light-headed and distanced,
turning the pages of stories I will never read and reminded 
that I can not read it all,
and I can not know it all,
I'm not even smart at all.

And it was outside of a library where 
we sipped beer under the night sky and
you sheepishly admitted that you were 
always the slowest reader in your class
but you could handle Foucault just fine.
And I couldn't think of a reply so the only
thing to do was just sigh when all I really
wanted to do was just kiss you.

And it was in a library where
I would feel most at home - each whisper amplified,
reverberating through the knots in my spine and I could
kill time with characters so twisted and insane that even
the most mundane plot could consume my thoughts
for just a brief moment, and I could forget about the
time spent outside of libraries, sipping beer under the night sky,
where I do everything wrong and you'd do everything right.


Sometimes, I'm transported back to 
the muffled romantics of those old cities and hotel rooms 
where we'd confess thoughts in rolling black-outs by candle,
and compare faults and flaws until we only saw each other 
as bits and pieces of stories haphazardly thrown together by time.
But books seem to get better with time, and I'd rather have
the character of dog-eared pages with your criticisms
scrawled into my margins  than be stuck on the top shelf
and never have been opened at all.