Conflict

I have never understood

why you abandon books.

You leave them hewn

half-open, peaked like

the homestead tents

of tiny lost settlers

trying to build a life

in strange lands:

carpet, coffee table,

the open wilderness

of the kitchen counter.

Sometimes I pick them up,

just to meet the character

you left nursing a beer

and a bloody wound

in a shady Boston bar,

the fright-eyed one

hiding under thorn bushes

from goblins and wolves,

the mother with hair

like sunset and her finger

on the trigger of a gun

and I have started

to notice a trend:

you put down stories

as soon as their central

conflict is revealed

and this explains

why you are not here now.