Margarita Karapanou, tr. by Karen Emmerich, from Rien ne va plus

press me between your pages, let me wither where the ink breathes and the paper ages. let my veins flatten against forgotten words, so that even silence carries the weight of me. i do not ask to be remembered in the sunlight, only in the shadows where your thumb lingers too long on a sentence that reminds you of something you cannot name.

i want to be the fragile thing you stumble upon years later, brittle and almost dust, yet still holding a trace of color that time could not wash away. when the book falls open and the air tastes faintly of me, you will not know whether to smile or to grieve.

because what is love, if not the art of leaving behind fragments, petals that crumble, words that ache, the ghost of a touch pressed into paper.

and when i am nothing but a stain in the crease, a soft bruise on the story, may you finally understand: i was never asking to be whole. i was only asking to remain, quietly, in the places you could not bear to forget.