Living Tissue

Literature, to me,
is a living organism.

Its pages are tissue.
Its margins, skin.

Every sentence
makes an opening.

This page has a pulse.

It beats
beneath your eyes.

But it is also my house—

the body
my mind returns to
when it has nowhere else
to go.

This is where it stops,
where it rests,
where it lays down
what it has carried
too long.

A thought enters
and removes its coat.

A memory sits
at the edge of the bed.

What I cannot say aloud
finds a room here.

That is how we meet—

through the fibers
of the web,

your eyes moving
through the place
where I have left
pieces of myself.

Some readers arrive
like stitches.

Some arrive
with clean hands
and know instinctively
where not to touch.

Others come
with no intention
of being gentle,

turning the wound
toward the light
to see
what refuses
to close.

A page remembers
every person
who has handled it.

It changes temperature.
It alters its breathing.

Sometimes
it begins bleeding
before the reader
has reached the end.

Coagulation
is inconsistent.

It depends
on who found the wound—

on whether they came
to close it,
to study it,
or simply
to watch it bleed.

Perhaps you came
only to read.

Perhaps you did not know
that reading
is a form of touch.

But now you are here,

inside the house
my mind built
to survive itself.

And for as long
as you remain,

the walls keep breathing.
The page keeps beating.

Somewhere between
your eyes
and my words,

the distance
becomes tissue.