Spine-

Books and women share a spine.

One is judged by how well it holds together. The other by how long it can.

We call them well-read well-bread well-bound,

ironic how every compliment sounds like a way to keep something closed.

A bent page becomes a bookmark. A bent woman becomes a warning.

I wonder how many of us mistook breaking for opening.

Or whether we were simply taught, that a cracked spine is easier to forgive on a book, than on a woman.