Last night my cover was blown on the children’s news:
Hannah van Binsbergen will never be actualized.
She will fade until she is a ghost, the narrowest tyre in the world,
unfindable in the catalogue.
Close your eyes long enough not to fall
in the library
it is a forest of cacti, don’t go back there,
take your beloved’s hand elsewhere
the playground is no place for pleasure.
The desire to change into a book shocks the young viewers
their parents reassure them: don’t worry, it will never happen.
Let my vision be free!
My vision is innocent!
The library is too shallow a grave
you’d go crazy from all the voices you heard there
and the shadows behind the shelves
are the result of trying to live normally for 3,000 years
in the hereafter – don’t go back there.
For everyone the book they deserve:
my friends have become encyclopaedias
and the odd boiling manual
they are undead and hungry but ultimately
just something you can pick up
and put down next to your bed, turn off the light
for a night that serves the day
in which everyone lives and belongs to the world.
I will never become real.