A Library Book Left Open in the Grass

More about A Library Book Left Open in the Grass

She was sleeping like a library book left open in the grass,
the kind nobody checks out anymore because everyone is afraid of silence.

Leaves framed her face the way parentheses hold a thought together without explaining it.
Her hair had the soft logic of water that has decided not to move for a while.
Nothing dramatic was happening.
That was the drama.

If you leaned close enough you could hear her breathing doing small, responsible jobs—
in, out, like a clerk stamping papers in an office that never closes.
Each breath approved the world as it was.
No revisions needed.

Someone had once told her that beauty was a form of effort,
but she had missed that memo completely.
Her closed eyes were not dreaming of ambition or mirrors.
They were dreaming of moss, of shade, of the idea that time might take a lunch break.

The light touched her face carefully,
as if it had been warned not to wake her.
Even the sun, normally such a show-off,
behaved itself.

If this were a story with a lesson,
a bird would land on her shoulder
or a prophecy would be whispered into her ear.
But nothing like that happened.

She slept.
The leaves stayed leaves.
The world continued its strange habit of existing.

And that was enough.