If you ever find yourself outside of a used bookstore, do not pass go. Open the door and
happen upon stories, treasure maps, keys to other worlds, and maybe an old cat named Frank
wandering the corridors. You’ll know it’s the right place based on the unorganized shelves and
grungy carpet, the smell of dust, life, and letters will whirl under your nostrils. That same dust will
hang limply in the air under the stream of sunlight in the stained windows. You will be picked,
called out and born here. As you walk silently down each aisle, you won’t really need to read the
title. And if you do, do it at the end. If you let yourself feel it, your soul will tell you. Drift a finger
over the hump of each spine, each worn and scarred body, and when it says stop, Listen. Grasp
it gently, and no matter what, smell it first. The old ones always call to me most. So many hands
where mine lies now, so many shelves, tables, and beds it laid on before resting here. There are
so many lives it saw, with its own scribbled inside. Open this one. I promise, the more molds of
pages folded the better. Does it have doodles and words, quotes underlined? This one is
definitely for you, a chronicle from the author and all those that dared enter it’s core. Notice the
cracks in the spine and the yellow coloring of the pages, fill yourself into those crevices. If the
inside tugs at your soul, leaving you wondering and begging to find out who else held it, whose
smell and cells linger along the edges, if the inside does this. Close it and read the title. You’ll be
surprised at how often it’s just what you’ve been looking for.
Comments
Post a Comment