I'll Buy You More Books Tomorrow
Yes, I still will.
[Another bonbon for y’all. DO NOT READ if you dislike smut. It almost is.]
In 1290, the collection of the library of the Sorbonne numbered 1,017 volumes. It’s possible my love and I have bought that many books from used bookstores. Our figure may be high. Or not — how could we count? After all, we eat them, sometimes, winnow them, shuffle them, use them to wrap Christmas presents, stack them in the outhouse for the usual purpose. You can do a lot with books.
Will you love me if I buy you all the books in the used bookstore then flop down on the floor of our deep shadowy library and lift my ass to your hand?
Loose pages skid everywhere. Your manuscript’s falling apart. (I was jealous of it.) Our leaves get confused with each other’s. Quills sharp as thorns sprout. My inky breasts stamp the floor like it’s a giant library book, wet blobs on the boards.
The dot matrix printer wakes up of its own accord and churns out our words but accidentally translates them into Church Latin. We’ll use them for bedtime stories. We peel the perforated edges off the pages so fast they rip.
You shred page after page of China Miéville1 and shove him into my mouth. Scotch tape, duct tape, but it’s too late, the words are everywhere.
The City & the City, which when they blend in my stomach create Breach, summoning the transgressive enforcers of boundaries, also called Breach, to unravel the selvages. I either shit words, deliver a baby who comes out quoting Areopagitica, or collapse into a black hole after this singularity occurs in my gut, reminding you Al is nought good to the goost that the gut asketh — though in fact it was not I who asked for this incursion. However, I’m effectively silenced by the influx of pulp paper, so with no one to contradict you, you mend the printer and start work on your next monograph. Such is life.