The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet
by Molly Gerard

​This is what my father was raised on: 

tattered spines and Times New Roman. 

​

The Earth, a glowing incandescence in place of the moon.  

It is idea-spark yellow, unassuming, priceless.  

​

When he hands it to me, it is delicate. 

I hear the small, cracking noise of the binding, 

peel one film-like page from the next, 

observe a world in a tissue-paper frame. 

​

It is something that I will lose, 

something that will wake me in the middle of the night, 

and compel me to trace my fingers across  

every incorrect spine on my bookshelf.