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Cat Named Frank

 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.

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