"The 1st Poem in the Imaginary Book"

Woo! So this is my new book. It's called "No Matter the Wreckage" and when I made this book I was really excited to do this book release show. But I'm a spoken word poet and what that means is usually I have all of my poems memorized and I perform poems without things in my hands.

My publisher, Derrick Brown who is the captain of the Write Bloody Publishing Company and Kristin were like 'No, you have to read some poems from the actual book.'

And I said no I don't want to read them, I'll just tell people. I promise everything I'm doing is in the book but I don't want to have to read them. And then they're like 'No, you've got to read at least a couple.' It's like product placement.

So I was like 'Okay, okay, okay' I'll figure out how to read some from the book.

So this poem is called "The First Poem in the Imaginary Book."

If it were me, when the book arrives, I would immediately start scanning pages to find any trace of me.
My name, references to my body, my secrets, moments we shared.
I would pretend to be horrified if I found any evidence of myself, but really I would pray to find even a single mention.
You may do nothing like that.
You may not even crack the spine.
You may place this on a bookshelf or worse, under a stack of papers.
You may forget about it and regift it later to someone as a secret Santa.
I will never know.
But just in case you are like me, just in case you do think about the way your hands used to piano key my spine, the way you would whisper spells into my ears when I was napping.
The way I slipped notes into your jacket pockets just in case you wonder if all those winks ever meant anything at all.
I will tell you.
You do not need to look very hard to find your shadow here.
Your fingerprints are on these pages.
So many of your footsteps in the snow.