a sage falls in love

A sage falls in love with her first book. 

It is bound in baby rose leather and she is bound in a matching cotton dress.

She reads of pretty pictures found under this earth. 

Victorian everything, 

a simpler and more absurd world than the screens around her. 

The screens she falls asleep in night after night, 

holding her baby rose baby.

She is six years old. 

A sage falls in love with her first pen. 

It is a school standard ballpoint and writes on everything. 

She graffitis cursive book quotes on bathroom walls

and copies that graffiti to her mouth when she has to testify herself to the principal.  

Allowances spent on new pens to replace their confiscated counterparts empty the piggy bank. 

But everything she learns from the words those pens underline goes into a notebook, 

a canvas-covered calamity from the dollar section. 

At least the insides are more thoughtfully manufactured than its shell. 

She is twelve years old. 

A sage falls in love with learning.

It is a graduate school on the east coast and she is getting her MLIS. 

One day she will spread baby pink babies and concrete pens

with a weak paycheck and too much debt. 

For now, she sits in her future castle, 

memorizing every brick and curtain. 

"There are too many tapestries," a voice says.

"No," she responds. "There just aren't enough of the good ones."

She is 24 years old. 

A sage falls in love with a man. 

He does not spread knowledge, 

rather than creating knowledge. 

The man creates a tapestry for the sage out of her colors. 

and makes a rose on a typewriter.

Then another and another. 

Soon, she has a wedding dress full of love 

and the empty inkwell makes two rings. 

She is 48 years old. 

A sage falls into death. 

She leaves behind children who fall asleep in front of TV screens with classical teddies

and others who write book quotes on public walls,

having the extraversion she never did. 

They are not from her. 

They are not with her. 

They are hers, however.

She joins her man with inkwell vows, 

under the earth. 

Victorian everything.

She is dead. 

She is eternal.