Small Poetry Books Novels & Stories

A young girl, not quite tall enough to reach the sorting tray, was assisting in piling up the warm pages. "They sound like poetry," Lia whispered. "But with directions." She wasn't addressing anyone specifically, but the man folding pamphlets at the next table inclined his head. "That's the idea," he said. "Poetry endures. So does purpose." Outside, a cart of snacks rolled past—kutsinta, banana cue, rice cakes in banana leaves. The vendor paused, glancing in through the window. “You’re printing the memory books?” he asked. “Yes,” Lia said. “Want one?”

Most were about history, leadership, strategy. But there were a few that surprised me. Poetry. Classic literature. A worn copy of The Count of Monte Cristo. I smiled despite everything. Xavier reading poetry felt… unexpected. I pulled the poetry book out. Flipped through it. Some pages were dog-eared. Lines underlined. “The wound is the place where the Light enters you.” My throat tightened. I put the book back so fast you would think it burned me. Then I moved to his desk.

The title, engraved in handwritten letters like an intimate confession, was simple and revolutionary: “To Live.” Maeve held the copy between her hands, seated at the signing table in the bookstore she had chosen with deliberate care. Not the largest, not the most famous, but the one where, at seventeen, she had bought her first poetry book on a rainy afternoon, escaping home to avoid her mother’s acidic comments about her school essay. There was something circular about that choice — the girl who had sought refuge in other people’s words was now offering her own as shelter.

He returned his attention to the bookshelf at the rear of his office, the one he’d been browsing when he’d first heard the strange sounds outside, only being made by the cats, after all. The top shelf held purely “literary works.” Poetry collections of Blake, Yeats, Robert Frost, and Shakespeare. Prose collections of Zora Neal Hurston, Hemingway, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Flannery O’Connor, and folktales collected by the Brothers Grimm. Novels, from The Man in the Iron Mask to Madame Bovary, to Villette and Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, to A Passage to India by E. M. Forster.

This was what contentment felt like. This was what having your entire world contained in your arms felt like. “What are you reading?” I asked, noting the way she relaxed completely against me, trusting me to hold her, to keep her safe. “Poetry. Some old collection I found in the back corner.” “Any good?” “Some of it. Though most of it is very dramatic. Lots of tortured souls and unrequited love.” “Sounds depressing.” “A little. But some of the love poems are beautiful. Listen to this one.” She opened the book and began to read in that soft, musical voice that never failed to capture my complete attention.

He pulled a small rectangular pack- age out of his jacket pocket and placed it in my lap. "Oh... I have a present?" I lifted the package and unwrapped the soft blue tissue. It was a book. A very old and very special book. My heart started thump- ing hard as I realized precisely what Ethan had given me. "Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes, and Other Poems by John Keats?" I choked out in complete shock.

I close the door quietly. I spend an hour in the smaller library looking at the books. He has everything. Fiction. Nonfiction. Art books. History. A whole shelf of poetry that looks like it has never been touched. I pull out a volume of Mary Oliver and flip through it. Someone has dog-eared a page. I read the poem. "Wild Geese." I read it twice.

I tell myself to be normal for five minutes, to just be a person who buys tea and listens to people read, and not someone who survived a marriage contract, a diagnosis, and a city’s gossip machine with my name in its mouth. It's downtown and it's small. The kind of bookstore that stacks chairs between tall shelves and has a crooked stage made out of two platforms pushed together. There are string lights and a chalkboard that says OPEN MIC — 7PM — 5 MINUTES EACH — BE GENTLE. Someone’s kid is playing with a paper crane by the poetry section, and the woman at the counter is making a big deal out of steaming milk for a stranger because she wants the foam to look like a heart.

She asked I suddenly remembered the small poem in the book I have shared with Lea "Think of me, our time might come to an end. In a blink, you might be blind to see me." "I am on the brink of the cliff, can you catch me? I am shrinking, will you see me?" "In a wink, there's only one eye. In a heart, there's only one side" I haven't given attention to it but, it did affect me. Little did I know, it was the end

He also saw her sense of beauty, her general understanding and perspective on life, and all of the things she surrounded herself with. A comic artist with all of these skills and insights would normally have to be pushing 40 years old or more—it was very rare for someone of Madeline's age to behave that way. It wasn't just those either. Madeline had her unique way of understanding many things around her. She had her own opinions on things and wasn't shy to speak her mind. She was like a very good book. The more the reader consumed the book, the more they would be hooked on her without even realizing it.