Poetry Books Free Online Novels & Stories

A w‌ee‌k after the bookstore, a plain, unmarked package was deliv‌ered to Elara’s studio. There was no⁠ retu‍rn address⁠, no not‍e. W‌ar⁠y⁠, she opened it to find‌ not a weap⁠on or a threat, but a book. Th‍e‍ sam‍e lea‍ther-bo‍und collection of Mary Oliver poems they had both reached for.

He began contemplating death. I turned another. Still death. “No.” I put it back. The sixth was poetry. Better. I opened near the middle. Grain. I read the next poem. Also grain. I checked farther back. Rain. Then grain after rain. I closed the book. Six Veyrathi books. Not one romance. This was a catastrophe of modest but genuine proportions. I looked at the shelf again in case a seventh had developed while I was reading about grain. It had not.

"There's one in Capitol Hill open until eleven. We could just browse. No agenda." "Okay. Pick me up in twenty." The bookstore is quiet. Soft lighting. The smell of coffee and paper. We split up. An unspoken agreement to explore separately. I find him thirty minutes later in the poetry section, reading with complete focus. "Find anything?" I ask. He shows me a collection by Mary Oliver. "I didn't know I liked poetry. But this is—it's beautiful." "Buy it." "I will." We leave with five books between us. None of them self-help or business strategy. Just novels and poetry and a cookbook.