There’s a cunning to books I don’t own.
Tricks the eye into slipping
from shelves stacked ‘soon’
where old resolutions stagger
parchment pale and haggard
around uncracked spines.
I play a teasing game,
ply their pages with well-meaning,
find an aged acquaintance,
face new with forgetting.
Thumb their successors guiltily
like a child caught, ear at the door,
and smuggle home each new treasure,
slip it into the seams unseen
and whisper ‘no more, no more’
with every book I’ve ever bought.