Reader On The Shelf Poem by Shirani Rajapakse

How different is a bookworm
from any other worm, you might

wonder. A worm is
a worm is a worm. Munching on

paper devouring words. Was he a reader
in a previous life? Perhaps a writer who

dedicated his life to words
now forgotten; dead, his body

rotting in a grave eaten up by other
worms. Ideas created inside an old room,

sitting at
a table paper and pen in front

he scribbled out lines
that made the world stand up and take

note. Was that why he returned
to books? A cruel twist of karma, bad

deeds of a past lived in sin taking
over turning him into a creature without a brain

to understand the meaning of his
life or a backbone to stand up

straight? But this was no ordinary
worm but a worm

of words no less. A wordsmith come here
to wait out his life between folds

of paper devouring, gorging on
the writing of a forgotten one whose lines sit

in tomes stacked on shelves inside rooms
where people come in silence, to read

and ponder, meditate on the
images hidden within the folds. Likewise

the worm, miraculously saved from a
life on a garbage dump, sits

between the old pages delighting in
stories, consuming to his heart's content.