A Reader in Darkness

Before you go to bed you insist on switching the lights off

And checking, by touch, in the darkness, that you locked the door

And that you pulled down the blinds.

You leap like a cat up the stairs

And slip into your bed,

And dream –

That the book you were reading at your desk

Is being opened again in the darkness:

Other fingers are turning its pages;

Other eyes rest their gaze

On the absence that repeats between the lines…