Written down here, gentle reader

It seems too good to be true

But there’s a girl in Kansas City

With my favorite tattoo

Oh why would I lie to you?

 

Sandara Park liked books.

 

She liked the feel of them against her fingertips as she turned the page.

She liked the scent of them, which she would catch whenever she misplaced her glasses and could only see if she held them this close to her face.

She’d rummage through books in those dusty old secondhand bookstores.

She especially liked leather-bound books.

 

Sandara’s favorite books were set in a previous time period, long before her own

where chivalry wasn’t dead

and a happily ever after was only a few chapters away.

 

Sandara understood the characters in her books.

It's only people in real life she didn't understand.

Books just made sense.

 

Her first (and only) boyfriend used to joke about how she liked books more than she liked him.

She never corrected him

because he wasn’t wrong.

 

Her boyfriend used to ask her to show him her love the same way she did with books.

 

By the feel of her fingertips touching him.

By the scent of her own unique aroma that she could only make whenever he’d get this close to her sweetness.

He tossed around the idea of her getting his name branded on her arm.

She especially didn’t like that idea.

 

So when he dumped her on the eve of their one year anniversary, she decided to get a tattoo of what she really liked, on her arm.

 

 

This was in another century

Somewhere near the summer’s end

The Fahrenheit was frightening

I was awake the whole weekend

 

Sandara Park was uncomfortable.

 

She had stayed up all night finishing up a rather scandalous 18th century gothic novel about morality

which left her both physically and mentally exhausted.

 

But her mother had gulled her into accompanying her to another one of her co-worker’s parties.

 

“You need to get your head out of those books, Sandara,” she said.

“Find adventure in the real world.”

 

She didn’t like it here

in the real world.

 

 

Invited to a barbecue

I found refuge in the kitchen

Discussing post-war US literature

With a girl whose upper arm read “fiction”

Like it might have been typewritten

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