The Same Page

Page eighty-seven is where I stop,

where the story goes slack,

where I can't find what kept

my attention before, where I track

the same sentence twice,

three times, and it doesn't click.

I opened it in May.

I opened it again in July.

The bookmark stays in place,

and I don't know why

I keep coming back

to the same crack

in the spine, the same dog-eared corner,

the same defeat.

I'm not a reader anymore.

I'm someone who can't complete

a simple thing,

who starts and clings

to the hope that this time

will be different, that my brain

won't betray me mid-line,

that I'll push through the strain

of not caring enough

to keep going. But I'm stuck

at page eighty-seven, where

the characters keep talking

about something I don't understand there,

where my mind keeps balking,

where I've written the date

three times and learned to hate

the thing I used to love.