Stains in the cloth, rings left behind by mugs of coffee and glasses of wine.
The edges browned, the paper frayed, held by the binding.
Scraps of paper ripped from its body by nervous hands,
string unraveling, unable to hold its organs.

It is gasping for air,
Dust filling its lungs,
coughing, searching for
a new breath of life,
New hands, new imaginations, new touches.

Pages fastened upon other pages,
words rubbing against other words,
words not meant to be attached together.

Ink weakening:
begins as black, a black as dark as nothingness
goes blue,
green,
then grey.
A grey fragility.
Words precious, but blurred,
blended into mustard pages.

Tears stain the once forlorn language,
a story of fear, heartbreak, and grief,
but lost among its haze, now just
words, filling up
space among the page.
A page once talked about amongst the avid ones,
the intellectuals,
the conceptualists.

Now masked by its smell,
overwhelmed with coffee and wine rings,
blotched ink, stubborn dust,
ripped pages, lost words, and broken apart by what holds it together.

Then everything is gone,
then grey turns into white