6.

These books that can never
go back through the gates,
out under the streetlights,
leave their isotope dust
in late trams and cafes
and turned-over apartments —
these books inside here
for the duration, jammed
on trolleys, still dangerous
in their scuffed half-lives —
these are brought to you
before lights out, to cells
where their authors were
last seen or heard of.

You know what it means:
contempt like tenderness,
gentle sine wave of revenge.
You're free to read yourself
out of this world, sit
by the dead, eat the salt,
as if every page you turn
and scan before the bullet
by just so much could
diminish them, and you.

Instead, in these opened books
streetlights and cityscapes
glow not as you loved them
but as you longed to love them;
voices not to be silenced
are no longer whispering.

Instead, when you open
these books, the last of you
flows into them like a charge.