Member-only story
No One Is Coming to Save Us
2024 Poetry Project — #14
i wander down the aisles,
press my fingertips to spines,
and wonder where the end is —
or perhaps it’s waiting in some book?
they whisper to me sometimes —
or so i feel they do, in my fanciful brain —
that they want to be read and held and felt,
if only the readers would come to them and realize.
but i ask them so many questions,
these stories that i read,
as if they are the tomes to time
that can be read before and after and again.
i know the stories are not for me —
even as little do they know —
but they speak to me regardless
and wander in unspoken cues.
“who will tell our stories?”
they seem to ask again and again —
and i wonder who will speak for them
when i am dead and gone and unable.
the stories are beautiful,
so beautiful in ruses and gleams —
but i try to ask of them missives untold
even as i cry that there’s so much i’d rather do.
