She reads people like books.

Tomes bound in vellumed skin.

Transcribed in blood, and sweat, and tears;

Masterworks of accruing years.

 

Some were surprisingly, painfully short;

Superficial or collapsing mid sentence.

Others were extensive fulminations,

Verbosity obese with it’s own orations.

 

Fantasies and fictions delighted her,

Dreamt up by fever’d brows;

Terpsichorean tales, delivered over wine,

Buried truths, with  intertwined.

 

All were scanned and critiqued.

Some discarded as a bad read.

She would come to feature in other pages

Until written out for fairer faces.

 

Then one day she met a man

Who she could not translate,

And she realised she would have to learn a new tongue.

Tentatively she spoke; she wrote like a child again.

 

Her own words came out mangled.

She could no longer make the chapters marry,

Meaning became formless, in-cohesive locution.

Expression perished in it’s own execution.

 

So she’s still learning

To read, again.