The Librarian and the Reader

I spied you first entombed inside an epic of lust and rage.

You crunched your brow into a frown – eyes strained into the page. 

Your hair was mussed behind your head, and you didn’t seem to care;

Your arm was curled beneath your chin, your leg tucked in your chair.

I saw you next as you bounded up, a romance clasped in hand; 

You blushed and grabbed another that I don’t think you had planned.

Your capricious smile reflected your whimsical mood that day;

Your twinkling eyes just seemed to shake all the mundane away.

I watched you coil into a horror on the other side of the room;

You’d been reborn as a monster’s prey, and the pages sealed your doom. 

Your gray tattered coat clung to the chair as if it didn’t matter;

Your thumb nail clamped between your teeth to ward off the thunder’s clatter.

Then I couldn’t tear my gaze from yours as you stumbled through the door;

Your eyes were red and rimmed with dread: we closed at half past four.

You had to have the next one – and the third one, just in case;

You grasped them in impatient hands, seized in mystery’s embrace.

I finally got the chance to put a fantasy in your hand.

Your blazing smile was my reward, as you swept through my favorite lands;

Your vivid wonder snatched my breath like a tide with all its swirls

As your fingers danced along the spines of countless other worlds.

I’d finally caught the creature, most alluring of any book,

To catch a reader’s heart, I found, fiction is all it took.