Loss of Plot

The airport kiosk has rows of the same,

glossy thrillers with embossed, silver ink.

I picked one up, but I forgot the name

before I even had time to think.

I’ve been on page forty for half an hour,

watching the sentences dissolve into lines.

The words have lost all their muscle and power;

they’re just ink on a page, like distant signs.

I found a clover, flattened and dead,

hidden in a book from a decade ago.

It’s a ghost of the things I actually read

before I stopped needing to know.