I Want to be Read

I don't want confinement
behind strict white
cut to fit a traveller's pocket,
squeezed in on myself
where you peer around folds
to glimpse a meaning.

I don't want to be
recorded, sorted and optimised,
placed against the others waiting
to be discovered
or left preserved
or maybe lost.

Take me from them premature,
toss me to survive
and see myself reflected
many times a different angle
in prismatic clarity
though from uncertain origins.

Tear me from my bounds to share,
transpose me to your breath.
Prop me up
so that I may see myself live
in thought and speech and action
of the everyday.

Don't let me be another one of them;
I'm not content with seclusion —
I was made to be crumpled
in a strange kind of love.
Being seen is not enough;
I want to be read.