As I throw down the magazine
my eyes have glazed across

(the paper’s glittery words
digging a headache into my brain
under the dim bedroom lights)

and a creak from my weight
shifting beneath the covers
is the only sound left in the house

(this mattress
seems worn
to its bare wires)

it is one of those nights
where I can’t help
but recall back

to the poetry in the book
I discovered on my tenth birthday---

though buried in the bottom shelf,
these verses now surface
to touch my threadbare nerves

with the reminder
that my old love for fragments
forms a whole.