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poem submitted to "The Power of Fiction" poetry contest, Natasha L. Scragg, sponsor, 9/7/2026
When I read, gravity loosens its grip, a small unfastening felt first in the ribs. The page tilts the air, bending it around me like a soft distortion in the fabric of breath. Words behave as particles~ colliding, scattering, recombining in the quiet behind my eyes. Characters arrive as changes in mass, their presence altering the room’s center of pull. Some make the world lighter; others press gently on the sternum as if adjusting the density of thought. I feel them move through me like currents slipping along an unseen axis. Sentences stretch time~ not metaphorically, but with the slow elasticity of something being warmed by attention. Moments dilate; minutes contract; the clock becomes a suggestion rather than a law. My pulse syncs to the story’s frequency, a low hum of shifting energy that travels through bone and breath. The book becomes a field generator, rewriting the physics of the room until everything around me feels slightly untrue and beautifully so. By the final page, equilibrium returns~ but not the same one I began with. When the book ends, the world doesn’t snap back. It settles slowly, in its own uneven way, as if the constants I rely on have shifted a little. I move through the room with a changed center of balance, still feeling the story’s pull inside me, a private force that lingers long after the cover shuts.
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