Only one volume remains, rain-soaked and not new. A steady stream of patrons today and all the other books are gone. A is for apple books and did you know books and what happens when a bear fights a narwhal books, always the first to go. The tiny book of verses written to the five mice who never learned to navigate a maze. Love stories and cookbooks next. The one about only eating rice and frozen mixed vegetables for a year. Memoir about the time she almost died. When no one came close to dying but all were left gasping and afraid. The one where the astronomy teacher says keep wearing short skirts and you’ll get an A. (Reader, she already had an A.) The travel essays about the long road to the old sanitarium past the winery. The one where she moves away from everything she loves—she’s read that one twice, and twice is enough, even though the ending is good. But this one with the red cover, the one about her three griefs, she threw it into the library behind the others, but only she can stand to read it. The pages are covered with fingerprints, stained by wine and coffee, she carried it to the hospital and home, and can recite it word for word and she said I am done with lugging it around. But in the morning she will rush to open the doors of the library, take it out, claim it once again.
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Merie Kirby grew up in California and now lives in North Dakota. She teaches at the University of North Dakota. She is the author of two chapbooks, The Dog Runs On and The Thumbelina Poems. Her poems have been published in Rogue Agent, Sheila-Na-Gig Online, FERAL, and other journals.