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.