This Clumsy Living

The active reader

94 The active reader Reading a used book on evolution I wonder about fingerprints, how long they live. Were the fingers licked before the pages were turned, did the owner of the book, of the fingerprints read in the bathroom, will there be a hair on page 231, on a train, did he take the C uptown, did she eat lunch with the pigeons and hold the book open with her foot as she sat cross-legged on the lawn of the Municipal Building, a short hair, curly and black or blond and straight and long as my finger? Was she reading instead of getting her license on the day she’d promised to, after five months of dreading the DMV, instead of looking into the bill for lab tests, one hundred and seventy seven dollars to peek into her blood, her urine, instead of calling the furnace guy and dealing with his boots on the carpet, with his mouth moving in front of hers, with the expectation of small talk, did the book keep her from visiting her mother and asking about the MS, did he hold the book between his face and his wife, is it how he asked for a divorce, by not speaking, by saying the name Leaky over and over to himself, by letting the pages stand in for his face? Will I become everyone who read this book, did their eyes change the letters, is reading a sexual act, is there congress between the text and my gaze, 95 is there no mirror left me but words, why am I afraid of people, why do I talk behind them to the edge of their shadows, why did the continents drift, why didn’t the thumb stay put, is fear what it means to be human, am I what it means to be human, why did the brain ransom the heart to the mouth, why did we ever come down from the trees? ...