Tuck my hair behind my ears like dog-eared pages.

Underline my veins in black pen so you don’t forget the palindromes in my simile sinews.

Like all of us I have only ever been a book of “100 poems”.

Passed from card board book sale boxes

to the wrong library shelf

to the leg under the wobbly dining  room table.

Most days I book mark my sonnets in my elbows and free verse for my fingers

The haikus of my cheekbones.

I can’t tell if I want you to read me cover to cover or write love poems in my margins in colored purple pencil. You can be my 101st poem that I can write into the table of contents, hidden in my queasy flyleaf pages.