The Slow Creep

The cardboard gave way with a soft, wet sound,

spilling the contents across the concrete floor.

Books I had saved are now part of the ground,

fused at the edges and beginning to roar

with a green-gray fur that eats at the names

of authors I loved when I was twenty-one.

The moisture is patient, it has its own aims,

undoing the work that the binder had done.

I found a photograph of a face I still know,

but a smudge of the damp has taken the eye.

It’s a slow kind of rot that doesn't want to go,

a soft-spoken way of saying goodbye.