Bookshelf

Wooden planks
Holding their weight
Paper
Bound together
In hundreds
Spines
Like mine
But straighter
More solid
Though showing their creases
Dents in the doors
Of the tiny ink worlds beyond
In these boxes
A comforting warmth surrounds
As if curled in front of a fireplace
Safe
The wood and the paper and the spines
But it is not them
Burning
They are glowing
An invitation to enter
A calling
The little girl sitting in her place
On the shelf
Right to the edge
Her legs dangling down
She knows this warmth
This safety
She lives here
She climbs up and down
All over the planks
Over the top of the uneven spines
Snugly side by side
And it’s as if she is the only one
Who knows
This secret
The ink formations
Only formed once
Here
And they have been created
Just for her