From dusty spines to defined edges and sharp corners, the shelf stood taller than I. Books, slanted and never kept straight up, stood there, beckoning me, calling me there.
And I'm there, in words of many promises and downsides galore. To lives I wish to live, but never have time to make.
And I'm wondering why I loved reading. Wondering why I wonder with questions already answered with lips of soft spoken complexity.
Answers to things I can't quite understand. But as I feel the sharp edges of paper along my fingertips, as I feel the spine, the altogether piece holding the paper in place with stories untold and told, I know.
My questions stand, still, with ABC or D, and none of the options are wrong, nor are they right.
But I choose anyway because I need a reason to keep going, to continue with lines that live and float and swirl around me, whispering and shouting things into my eyes, into my head. A thing lay there, playing and remembering, playing and remembering, over and over, repeat repeat.
And then it ends, yet still lives. For a story is not a story until it's told, over again and again.
