My heart hurt thinking about you
so I bought a book of poems
I may already have:
a line so small and heartbreaking
crept up on me
and slipped itself inside me and
stopped me dead in my tracks
and I trembled
– and yet, I may already have this line
in the very same book I may already own
and yet what if I am wrong
that is the question
about the book at home
and later this evening,
the store closed,
lights out, everybody
gone, home, alone, one lamp lit,
wondering how I dreamed up such a mistake
– what a terrible desolation – and
yet I am now driving home,
book in hand, so to speak,
in a bag resting in the passenger seat,
and the only surprise still possible
is this:
what if on the other hand,
I now have two beautiful slim volumes
of the exact same book of poems,
each with the hidden line I love,
one for me and the other for you.
chris woodhull
Monks & Mannequins 