poem scribbled onto the back of a half price books receipt whilst sitting in the architecture section

Poem scrawled on the back of five year old half price books paystub

We never have Murakami
because no one sells it
and whenever someone asked for it
I sighed
because even if it did show up
I would only lie
and buy it for myself

while Russel Hoban collects dust
because college students don’t care
he’s simply untumblrable
and infinitely unglamorous

He doesn’t fit in the fantasy
that selling books equates to reading them
the laughable glamour
that paris exists
in a retail bookstore

Cold reality-
the employees are ugly
unpierced
undyed
unimportant
unmodified
but you only saw
what you wanted to
but I held the inventory manager
when her father died

he was a serial killer

and those people dying
never mattered to you anyway
while you drooled on the paper
that cost them their lives

and fantasized

The smell of old books
is just decomposition.
Lignan is nothing special
and neither were you

but I didn’t hate you
I loved your footfalls
echoing through fiction
while you hated my sighs

tired
from the work
that took my time
from the books
tired
from the sideways
judgmental looks
when I was caught
fondling Heidegger
on fringe of the children section

I wished so badly to make it through
to have that moment
I dreamed of
come true
where we bumped into each other
and I could have promised
that every book you ever wanted
I would have lent to you.