She wrote him a ballad between
the Classics and the Poetry
shelves in the public library,
inhaling papery pheromones.
She spotted his shadowy
figure between periodicals
and autobiography,
held her breath
to stop the erratic timpani
of her heart
and the blood-red symphony
surging in her ears.
The poem slipped from her sweaty
fingers, drifted off between
the shelves, where he
bent to pick it up, and she closed
her eyes as he read words
she never meant him to see.
Swathed in shadows studious and literary,
a bibliophilic vampire or ghost,
she did not see
him put the poem in his pocket,
unaware that she was the subject
of his own anthology of poetry.
Kim M. Russell, 12th April 2020
My response to Imaginary Garden with Real Toads NaPoWriMo Day 12 Play it Again in April 2020: Love
Fireblossom Friday on 12th April 2019 was all about love, as Shay says, ‘the stuff poetry is made of’, and she wants us to write about love for people who do not know we love them: the guy at the music store, the girl in the apartment across the hall, the actor on the screen, a character in a novel.
I’m merging this prompt with Kerry’s Skylover Wordlist, sourced from Dylan Thomas’s poetry collection Deaths and Entrances, from which the twelfth word is ‘ballad’. I seem to have been haunted by a romance from the 1920s.
writing in north norfolk 
My goodness this is good! I love; “held her breath to stop the erratic timpani of her heart and the blood-red symphony surging in her ears.” Woww!! 💝💝
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Thanks Sanaa!😍
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I’ve written a few of these lovers-unknown-to-each-other tales, but few a good as this one. I love that it’s set in the library and involves an accidentally delivered love poem. Great work, Kim.
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Many thanks, Ron!
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Oh, that’s a very nice twist!
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Thank you, Rosemary!
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This poem makes me think of Bjorn’s aged librarian – perhaps she wrote her poem to him! Smiles.
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This poem makes me think of Bjorn’s aged librarian – perhaps she wrote her poem to him! Smiles.
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Maybe in his younger days…
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Wonderful!
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Thank you, Ena!
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Sigh..poets and lovers…always two of my favorite things
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Even better if they are both at the same time!
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A veiled crush unlosed a bit. Nice write, Kim. I loved the line, “inhaling papery pheromones.” He sure wasn’t sniffing them, he went big! I love your picture too, is that your school library? You?
..
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oops, when printed I should have written “unloosed”. Sorry.
..
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Not me, although the library is similar to the one I loved at school, but there were no boys, and the only librarian was a very staid woman, with twinset and pearls.
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Sigh… Such a romantic meeting place.
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If only…
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