The Book

I held it in my hands he told the story.

He had found it in a fallen bunker,
a book for notes with all the pages blank.
He took it to keep for a sketchbook and diary.

He learned years later, when he showed the book
to an old bookbinder, who paled and stepped back
a long step and told him what he held,
what he had laid the days of this life in.
It's bound, the binder said, in human skin.

I stood turning it over in my hands,
turning it in my head. Human skin.

What child did this skin fit? What man, what
woman?
Dragged still full of its flesh from what dream?

Who took it off the meat? Some other one
who stayed alive by knowing how to do this?

I stared at the changing book and a horror grew,
I stared and a horror grew, which waws, which is
how beautiful it was until I knew.
-Miller Williams

This poem is really weird and a little gross, but I decided to do it anyway. I really liked the structure of this poem. It was done in a way to tell this story of how this book changed the more that was found out about it. It's almost like there is two lifes now with the book. The life of the man who wrote in it and the life of the person whos skin was used to bound it. It really makes me wonder why. why did this happen? What purpose did it serve? Its horrible that someones flesh was used for the binding of this book. I love books but I wouldnt even want to touch a book binded by human flesh.