There are notes in my handwriting that fill the blank pages on the backs of volumes
crowding my bookshelves, each a trivial remnant of a stranger I believe I once knew.

Sometimes when I look at them, it comes to my mind: all this effort and no sign
of the passage of time. But I did notice an interesting shift in punctuation.

And as I scribble these words in a newly acquired hard cover, I wonder
if the future me will still be bothered by that puzzling discontinuity

in the use of exclamation marks.