Cover to Cover

At first, the page is clean and blank;
our eyes unable, blind to words.
We pick and choose the phrases that
we won't/cannot misunderstand.

But, things get easy, so they say.
The words we read become more real.
We find beginnings are made of
our truths and wills and hopes and dreams.

The story must begin! We say.
And it, when it starts, we're happy.
The pages turn, the plot thickens.
We are but children, bright and new!

But with each page comes plot and spite.
We meet conflict, antagonist,
the rising action, see the twist.
Our love is torn from lover's limb,

and we become the pages torn.
It starts off happy, doesn't it?
We climb the good climb to the top
and try to never turn around.

But in the end we cannot help
but fall in love. Acquainted with
the lover's quarrel, we have the taste
of blood on our crimson-dyed lips.

Despite how wretched, wrinkled we
become, we cannot find the fight
to put our books on dusty shelves
and file away our lonely lives.