I used to think, I was unreadable
a manuscript of unfinished thoughts
a chaos of unbound metaphors
but then you arrived, and for a time
you were fluent in my silence
you spoke my hidden syntax
the tremors between breath and words
the unwritten grammar of longing
you read me aloud in the moonlight
and I believed the story made sense
but all stories eventually fade
ink bleeds, pages become brittle
you closed me mid-sentence
and time, that relentless editor
cut out whole paragraphs of us
now, when I walk past bookshops
I understand vellichor anew
it is not about the books themselves
but the readers, who left them behind
it is about once being known
and now left upon the shelf
longing for someone, who remembers
how the story goes
© Ann Bagnall
Annie's Poetry 