Directions to a Place You’re Wanted

By: Abigail Handojo 2023

“My synonym for love is an empty library”

By empty I mean full but untouched

By full I mean intact but internally crushed

Your carpet is a river,

Noone’s around to bathe in

Your shelves hold secrets,

Sitting songbirds of wisdom

I could compare you to a prison,

The books would be the captives

I would gladly be your inmate,

But the fact is…

Miles are between us,

And no compass can compete

You’re bound to this spot,

Stairs planted on concrete

Two-stories worth of stories

Novels written by nobodys

(And I just want to be somebody)

Not a classic case of Sense & Sensibility

“Proximity" is the best word since “insensitivity”

So surely there’s a map that’ll lead you to me

With a big red X painted in blood

That’s iron for you

Four letters scribbled in the legend,

“I yearn for you”

Follow the flock of hot-air balloons,

And soon enough, you’ll know where

For anyone can see, a place like you,

Doesn’t belong in the middle of nowhere

"Shhh"

Your walls don’t talk, they whisper,

Your shelves don’t take, they give

Filled with books waiting to be read,

An encyclopedia of reasons to live

Let me borrow one and sift through its pages

Even if I only last the prologue,

Love, you stand alone

like you’ve been standing here for ages

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Performed at the Ronald H. Roberts Temecula Public Library April 2023 Open Mic

Original cover edited using IbisPaintX and Picsart