Inkdeath. I haz it.

On the table sits a new book.
It’s one I’ve waited for for months.
Beside it is a half-empty mug of day-old coffee
which I keep forgetting to put in the sink.
The world outside the living room window is a depressing gray
and I hope to find a brighter world waiting at the end of 663 pages.

The story begins with a rustle of pages
and I’m pleased by the sound as the spine cracks in the book.
Before me is a world written in black and white, never gray.
Just as in real life, time has passed for the characters in long, weary months
since the last book; a few pages and into the story I’ve begun to sink.
I still haven’t dumped the old coffee.

I don’t know if there’s any coffee
in this story; it never comes up on any of the pages.
Wait, I think one chapter has Darius pouring some down the sink.
Or am I thinking of the previous book?
It’s been a while since I read that one, probably months
have passed, and memories fade and blur in my matter that is gray.

Outside the sky is a darker gray,
gray as the day-old coffee,
as we slip into the winter months.
I slip further into enticing pages
or try to before I’m distracted from my book
by a crash coming from the kitchen sink.

I FINALLY dump the old coffee in the sink
and chase away the cat whose fur is gray
and caused the crash which drew me from my book.
Suddenly I want fresh coffee
and settle in the kitchen as I find my lost pages;
the chapters are swallowing the days, weeks, and months.

Time speeds up as chapters cover hours instead of months.
The climax draws near and hope begins to sink
as our hero is forced to write his death on pages
of the whitest white while his heart is filled with gray –
I pause to take a sip of coffee –
and I’m anxious as he seals his fate with a book.

Turning from the pages, the sky is a pale ice gray
of a winter dawn - frozen months - and the cold stars sink
as I sip my coffee and finish the book.

Hurray English homework!!! I keep forgetting that I LIKE to write poetry. Of course I've spent the last 3 or 4 years focusing on writing prose, so I'll forgive myself this time. I just finished reading Inkdeath by Cornelia Funke and I loved it. So there.

This is a sestina. A sestina is a poetry form with six sestets and a concluding tercet, thus a sestina has 39 lines. The six words which end each line of a sestet are un-rhymed and are repeated in different orders throughout the remaining stanzas. In the closing tercet, all six words are used with two per line. Sestinas originated in France in the twelfth century, in the poetry of the troubadours, and is one of several forms in the complex, elaborate, and difficult closed style called trobar clus.

The More You Know...