A Work Of Fiction

An old man once told me,

That if you take a fictional book,

And read its content carefully,

Very often you will find,

The writer, hiding behind its words,

In the character traits and little incidents,

In the plot, between insignificant events.

And on closer look, you will find,

That the author of the book may be one,

But the stories in it have multiple authors,

For his twelve and twenty-two-year-old selves,

Both are sharing their stories on the same shelves;

It's a wonder how the event remains the same,

And yet time alters the story in retrospect.

And as the character arcs will progress,

There would be moments of bravery, of passion,

And moments of hesitation, of compassion;

All of them, hidden behind stories.

It may be a story of regrets devouring a soul,

Or maybe a story of someone's unachievable goal,

Or maybe a bizarre story of playing whack-a-mole.

It's an enigma how the smallest of moments

Can hide the simple and complex with equal ease.

And the desire to make someone understand,

And make someone as interested in a story as it is in own head,

Is the purpose that a book serves for an author,

And this purpose is the book's binding thread.

So when the book is metaphorically torn down to its binding core,

There is found a what-he-desired boat 

Anchored to the what-he-got seashore.