company

people say books are company when you’re lonely.

they aren’t. that’s a nice thing people say.
a book cannot ask you how your week was.

what a book does is more specific.
a man who died a hundred years ago in a small apartment
writes down the exact shape of a feeling
you thought was yours alone and slightly shameful,

and you sit there at midnight, holding it,
and you are not less alone,
but you are alone in a way that has been survived before.