Savannah Abrishamchian //

In a world that binds you like a spiral notebook, I wanted to put you in my pocket. Depending on the day, it would either be a gentle rip or a tough tear, if I were ever to split my pages. There would be scrappable scraps, or no remains at all. If only you’ll have me. If only you’ll find me. Stuck within a stack of wood pulp, between the leather bounds and the paperbacks.

I had seen you from time to time in different spaces of the library. Bent over at the water fountain for a late night drip. Frolicking down the stairs as if you lived here and were getting ready for bed. I imagine you in a nightgown, but you are usually in sweatpants, hiding between Science and Technology like you were scared of Nonfiction. Aren’t we all afraid of the truth?

If you ever noticed me, I was usually face up in an awkward threesome study session. I wonder how I ended up here, in the palms of these hands. Passed around like I was a smoke or communal bottle at a campfire, but never thrown away or recycled properly. Savages.

These two girls try way too hard to study with this bastard. I don’t know what they see in him anyway. His taste in fiction is poor and I’m pretty sure he doesn’t know the difference between ‘their’ and ‘there’. If this drives me crazy, it must make The Oxford English Dictionary want to commit a bloody suicide. I can imagine old Oxford going for his neck first and then the appendix. At least, that’s how I’d do it.

The bastard is quite rough with me, actually. I wouldn’t mind it if he read the hell out of me, but he just flips between my pages and it kind of hurts my stomach. I think you would understand if you saw me up close. If you just touched my corners at least, you’d see I’m a little fragile. I’ve been a little torn, I’ve been a little used. Falling pages apart until you check me out.

I am usually left in the deep hole of a North Face or Jansport. When I am finally remembered, I am thrown on a desk, sometimes the floor, and if I’m lucky, the bed. I’m not sure if it’s worse to be borrowed in daylight or to be ignored in a living room, but the last person who took me home barely even looked at me. I’m pretty sure she never read my title. I almost thought I was going to get depressed again, but I said not this time. This coke addict is not worth it. But if she ever did a line on me again, I swear, Chapter 3, Page 47, Paragraph 5 has a lot of delicate versions of “get the fuck off of me, are you nuts?” I am Italian leather and mi stai abusando.

I’m supposed to be open, not closed. Now I am bitter and blistering. I haven’t tasted this sad and rotten since the widower checked me out. I hope he’s cleaned up his Whiskey act. His fridge-magnet collection became my new map after being so far away from The Times Atlas of the World. I wanted to take that Florida toucan home to cover up the graffiti on the steel shelf I usually sleep next to, which says, “tell me how you really feel” a little too big. 

My roommates would have appreciated my decorative efforts, but probably not as much as the widower and his Jameson mustache. When I think about it now, the magnets on the fridge are probably his only company and I know how that feels. He deserves them more than I do. After all, I wouldn’t want to rip them from the external magnetic field they’ve been stuck to for quite some time now.

I think of you like the toucan magnet, but for all I know, you’re more of a Georgia peach, Savannah bee, or California poppy. Maybe all three in one. I have been stuck on you since I watched you cry between M and N in an aisle of poetry. I wondered why so much water spilled from your eyes in the space you usually frolic between 8PM and 2AM. And if the tears are still in there, I want to take them off your hands and sew them back together.

Drop by drop, I would knit them into a river. Perhaps the Mississippi. I would bring the Mississippi over to you, in the corner between M and N. I would draw you a city on one of my pages. One of my favorite pages, towards the end. And on this very page, I would put you back together in as many words as possible. I would make a new home for you, big enough for the both of us. Once I am finished, I will fold myself together for you. This is when I will finally rip a page.

If only you’ll have me. If only you’ll find me. If only I had a pocket in a world that binds you like a spiral notebook. Stuck within a stack of wood pulp, between the leather bounds and the paperbacks.