BODICE RIPPER

Esther is Jewish
The People of the Book
She has dementia
Never stops talking gibberish
Apparently in her day she was
an avid reader, it was all she did
The other day she was sitting
in her wheelchair in the
activities room of the
assisted living facility
I work at and she was reaching
across to try and grab a romance novel
from the table in front of her
So I went to hand it to her and she looked confused
Not taking it from me initially
I smiled and asked her if she wanted it
She squinted and smiled weakly in confusion
Said yes and took it from me
I went off to help other people out
for a while ducking and diving
here there everywhere and nowhere
as you do in that busy environment
When I came back later on into the room
She had taken the book and torn it into pieces
throwing them on the floor all around her chair
A pile of broken hearts and snapped spines
and dead lines and permanently demotivated characters
And as I sighed sadly and picked them up
to consign them to the dustbin of literary history
I thought well, Esther's days of
romancing and reading are
definitely long gone
Forever.