For a while I thought I was the dragon

Amazon e-mailed me the other day.

"C.T., sell back 'Crush (Yale Series of Younger Poets),'" Amazon pleaded in the subject line. So I read the rest of the e-mail, a bit aghast.

Then Amazon said I should be pleased to know I can trade in my used copies at the Book Buyback store.

I suspect this is a tool for reminding students they can get rid of their unwanted textbooks, even if they bought them used, but why, Amazon, would you come after a book which I am mentally clutching tightly and ferociously for fear that you would actually want it back from me? Is a booknapping imminent?

"Build me a city and call it Jerusalem. Build me another and call it
Jerusalem.
We have come back from Jerusalem where we found not
what we sought, so do it over, give me another version,
a different room, another hallway, the kitchen painted over
and over,
another bowl of soup."

- Richard Siken, litany in which certain things are crossed out