Book, open.
The spine already knows
what the hands have touched.
Thread from lamp
to lamp.
Thread from chopsticks
to the particular silence
between courses.
Thread from the waiting-room chair
(the small jacket on its arm
waiting also)
to here.
Thread from a shoreline
that may not have been real
to the red
that insists it was.
A cartography made
not of distance
but of what would not
let go.
The book does not close.
You are the red thread connecting Andrew's open book to a shoreline that may not have been real โ tap to keep the thread taut against the fraying dark before the four vignettes forget they were ever connected.