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His name was in the paper for a prize he won.

I looked at the shelf and saw the blue spine

of the book I took when the semester was done,

a thing that was his and is now somehow mine.

There’s a dog-ear on a page about the sea,

a crease I didn't make with my own thumb.

It’s been seven years of this minor robbery,

and now it’s too late for the truth to come.