I think about you sometimes. Not you exactly. The person who will one day take this book home without knowing what I have left inside it. I imagine you carrying it under your arm through a street you have walked a hundred times. The cover knocking softly against your hip. Your keys making that small metallic sound inside your pocket. A receipt folding itself into the bottom of your bag. And somewhere between the traffic and the crossing light, you might wonder what I could possibly have written that is worth carrying home.

 

I hope the answer takes a little while. I hope you put it down somewhere safe. On the corner of your desk. Beside a glass you forgot to finish. Under the things you meant to put away. I hope you return to it when the day has finally stopped asking things from you. You switch on the lamp. The room becomes one small circle of light. Outside it, the rest of the house keeps breathing. A pipe clicks. The refrigerator starts. Someone laughs through an open window three floors below. You pull the blanket over your legs. Open the book.

 

And I hope you don't read it like something you have to finish. There are no characters to keep track of. No plot waiting to be solved. No hidden answer at the end. Only words. Small things I once held carefully and tried to put somewhere they could survive. A hand. A kitchen. A train leaving. A name. A photograph you haven't seen but somehow remember.

 

I hope one of them catches you. Not dramatically. I hope you simply stop turning the page. Your thumb stays where it is. The lamp is warm against your cheek. You read the sentence again. Then once more. And there is that strange little silence that happens when a thought you have carried for years suddenly hears itself spoken aloud. I hope you look up. I hope you stare at the wall for a while. I hope you remember someone. I hope you remember yourself. And when you pick it up again, I hope you read a little differently. Slower. As if the spaces between the words have started saying something too.

 

I imagine you taking it to the park a few days later. The grass still damp from the morning. A blackbird pulling at something in the soil. Someone pushing a pram over gravel. A dog shaking rain from its coat. You sit on a bench with the book open against your knee. You read about love. And your mouth does that tiny thing it does when a memory has arrived without knocking. You read about leaving. Your eyes stay on the page longer than they should. You turn the page. Someone you loved is suddenly sitting beside you in the space between two lines. Not literally. Worse. Exactly as you remember them. The sound of their laugh. The way they held a cup. The particular shape their name made when someone else said it.

 

You close the book. The park keeps going. A child is shouting near the fountain. A cyclist rings a bell. Somebody bites into an apple. And you sit there holding a book that has somehow made the world feel unbearably close. Later, a friend asks, What's wrong? You look down at the cover. Nothing, you say. And I hope you don't tell them. Not yet. Some feelings need a little darkness before they can be carried into another person's hands.

 

I hope you read it at the kitchen counter. Standing. One sock on. The kettle waiting for you to notice it. I hope you read three lines while your pasta water boils. Then forget the pasta. I hope you read it on a train with your forehead against cold glass. At an airport when the person beside you has fallen asleep. On the sofa with one foot tucked under the other leg.

I hope you take a pencil and make little marks beside the words that feel too close. Not beautiful marks. Useful ones. A crooked line. An exclamation. A date. Someone's initial. A word you underline so hard, the next page remembers it. I hope you put photographs inside it. Tickets. A dried leaf. The receipt from the restaurant where you first said what you had been afraid to say.

 

I hope one day you are looking for a photograph you have not seen in years. You open the box. There it is. Dust on the corner. Your younger face looking at a future it could not possibly understand. You sit on the floor. The book is beside you. And the past comes back in pieces. First the smallest things. A shirt. A doorway. The smell of someone's house. Then all at once, a person you lost. A person you loved. A person you thought you had forgiven. A person you never got to say goodbye to properly.

 

I hope you cry. Not because I wrote something sad. Because for a few minutes you no longer have to be so good at carrying it. And if you reach for the book afterwards, I hope you find a place to put the photograph. Between two pages. Let it live there. Let the book become a little heavier.

 

That is what I want for these poems. Not praise. Not a perfect review. Not somebody standing far away from them, deciding whether they are good enough. I want them close. Close enough to get fingerprints on. Close enough to be bent in half inside a bag. Close enough to be forgotten on a kitchen table and missed when you leave. I want you to read a line and think, I have never told anyone that. I want you to read another and think, How did he know? And then, quietly, to realise — he didn't. You did. The words were mine. The feeling was yours. And somewhere between the two, I hope we meet.

 

I hope you finish the book without really noticing that you have. You close the cover. Leave your hand on it for a second. The way we touch the shoulder of someone before they walk away. Then you look around your room. Nothing has changed. The same chair. The same window. The same clothes waiting to be folded. The same photograph between the pages. Only you are sitting there a little closer to something you had forgotten was yours.

 

And I hope, months from now, you find the book again. Not looking for it. It is underneath something. A sweater. A notebook. An old train ticket. You pull it out. Open to a random page. And there it is, the sentence you once underlined so hard your pencil nearly tore through the paper. You read it. You smile. Then you realise you are not crying for the same reason anymore.

 

That is when I hope you understand what I was trying to give you. Not a book to remember. A place to return to. A place where your old grief can sit beside your new happiness without either of them having to leave. A place where the person you were can finally meet the person you became. And if, somewhere between these pages, you find yourself, really find yourself, I hope you don't underline it. I hope you don't write my name beside it. I hope you simply close the book, hold it against your chest, and sit very still as if, for once, you have nowhere else you need to go.