Carried it home a dead weight

Carried it home, a dead weight

pressed against my thigh—thick pulp,

timber trapped in yellowed sheets.

Gray spine cracked, like old skin split,

ink blurred in stubborn lines:

names, numbers, ghosts

before screens ate their names.

Fingers trace the smudged columns,

a ragged alphabet of silence

paging through strangers,

quiet voices trapped on paper.

Here is a map to nowhere,

a dusty tombstone

for a world that stops

when you hang up.