Bellow

tales of a girl in the city

avril 18, 2006

I think of you every time I pass by the tables outside of bookshops. Brown, black. Cardboard. Leather. They are all piled there, the smell of them was the smell of your room.

You, like me, always loved to read a good story told well. And more than that, maybe, we shared a love of the preservation those stories bring. The idea of safety. Open a book to an outcome that is the same every time. Turn pages and there the hero will always be. Still sipping tea. Still fleeing home. Still cleaning the chimney and taunting the cat. Still.

You are kept in the pages of my life. A pressed leaf. A letter I started once.

You are a thing I save for "good." My fancy dishes. My saddest poem. An antique that is kept away somewhere out of necessity.

Creak open the chest.

Touch the things carefully saved.

Look here at the stitching. See? So delicate it never served a purpose.

The light hit us and we turned to dust.