Bibliophile

Some days I walk upside down.

Hell scales the sky—

its ebony rain soaks my socks into the ground

where Paradise lies prone on the trodden earth.

I find it half-hidden, reclining in a cozy corner

stuffed with sheaves of inked pages and fictional friends,

wrapped in a comfortable silence 

that strokes my spine

and mutters stories under its breath.

I listen to this silence desperately 

when my mind spins uncontrollably

on a dance floor of roiling rain clouds 

and I search for a ceiling in Hell,

when my invisible pain pronounces itself

slantwise through my choice of reading material,

chasing sunlight across pages,

when people advise me to be the right way ‘round.