Marginalia

By Imogen Sabharwal

skin on skin,

feel the parchment, leave invisible prints.

pearlescent snake-weights on a medieval devotional, a gilded edge or oil spill marble insides.

centuries of hands and eyes, a palimpsest of histories and curiosities.

the wind bellows but the pages don’t flutter,

weighed by the snake, the words, a woman’s love, a woman’s fear, a prayer before Christmas dinner, arcane marginalia,

hasty crossings over forbidden names

yet you can’t erase history even as it’s being made.

a Parisian publisher, woodcuts and rubrication, paper portal to an ancient world while I pack my own gilded, butterfly wing journal for France

and write my travels in ink

and doodle in the margins.

Image by Bernd Dittrich via Unsplash