spines

by

There was something about old books, used books, that upset her, and at first I thought it was because she didn't want the words going to waste, didn't want them staying in dimly-lit places nobody could visit. She did not believe, the way the rest of us did, in necessary stillness, in the nothingness that cloaks us after too many somethings have been said and done. Then I saw the folded corners, the frayed strings sticking out of pages——landmarks——and I remembered how she once said she'd rather experience an incessant, unrelenting loneliness than a seesaw of losing and loving and losing again. It wasn't that these books were old and used, it was that they were abandoned halfway through, cracked open then discarded. It was the lack of closure that she found unbearable; some time ago, someone must have taken a chance and wished he didn't.