Finding an old book on a basement shelf—   
gray, spine bent—and reading it again,   
I met my former, unfamiliar, self,   
some of her notes and scrawls so alien   

that, though I tried, I couldn't get (behind   
this gloss or that) back to the time she wrote   
to guess what experiences she had in mind,   
the living context of some scribbled note;   

or see the girl beneath the purple ink   
who chose this phrase or that to underline,   
the mood, the boy, that lay behind her thinking—   
but they were thoughts I recognized as mine;   

and though there were words I couldn't even read,   
blobs and cross-outs; and though not a jot   
remained of her old existence—I agreed   
with the young annotator's every thought:   

A clever girl. So what would she see fit   
to comment on—and what would she have to say   
about the years that she and I have written   
since—before we put the book away?