I read slowly
the grey scribbles
at random interstices
in a book borrowed from you.
Annotations.
After all these years, are they meaningless?
Just notes
scribbled on blank spaces?
No.
They are calligraphic Rorschach blots
from the past.
Revealing a you
we didn’t know.
The penciled synonyms:
an earnestness
to strive for excellence;
the underlined sentences:
what was important to you when.
Has much changed since then?
Are individual histories
margin-jottings
in the book of life
by an anonymous reader?
Is the reader also the author?