The Archaeology of Margins

A stranger's name blooms in the margins— faded pencil, a looping hand, the ghosts of someone else's attention. I trace the underline beneath a sentence about sorrow.

Their questions crowd the white space: Really? Do you believe this? A asterisk, three marks like a heart breaking in slow motion. I am reading someone's reading.

The spine cracks where they stopped, where the coffee ring bloomed brown. How long ago did they close this book for the last time, believing they'd return? I am the future they never imagined—a hand that finds what they left behind.

In the back cover, a price tag: fifty cents at an estate sale. Everything becomes the past eventually— even the moment we think is happening now, even the small certainty of this margin, this conversation I'm having with someone I'll never know.