Rows and rows of books, stacked a little haphazardly on the shelves by customers who love a little too much. Running my hands along the books, feeling the paper-smooth covers beneath my hands, breathing in the scent of rich newness. Tasting words a few pages at a time, drinking in one book at a time to see if it's The One I can take home. The search is more glory than worry. Delicate floral fonts, smooth ripples of water on a cover. Books about a group of women in a silk factory, a feminist satire of Brave New World, a book about a girl who sold herself for a length of scarlet ribbon, or an independent child of the Victorian age. Names of people I will never know suddenly dear to my soul because they wrote these for me, for me alone to come read. Old familiar friends peering shyly at me between their alluring companions, people like James Joyce and Virginia Woolf and Charlotte Bronte, wondering why I've abandoned them for these upstarts of the literary world.
Like clever shopowners, my family lies out one tempting choice on the heels of another. Don't show me any more, I wail, I can't chosoe as it is. One more, my sister promises, you'll take it without doubt, and I do. Bawdy, clever-- just delicious, like a box of chocolates that I know, oh I know I shouldn't eat. Anne Boleyn reclines passively on the front of the book, her liquid eyes following me as I devour an author's whimsy of her life.
A little poet in a white dress, Emily Dickinson looks a trifle amused at her companion of choice. A writer's placed havoc with her times as well, but there'll be no sordid affairs in her letters. A pity, too-- she would have enjoyed them so. Flutters of translucent paper guard her letters from prying eyes, like isolation stayed her purity.
Get these, too, I tell my sister, pushing two more volumes towards her. It stays unspoken that I'll read them first. I always do, even when she gets more angry than and tugs the book from my hands. You can't read it before I do, Camille, let me have it first for once! I shrug, but my eyes follow her as she slowly turns one page. I can read faster than Kat, she knows it more than I do, and it's a game we play.
"Do you want a bag?" the person working the counter-- I know he's a member of the sacred clan as well-- I can tell by watching his eyes. He knows my ways, too, from his wry glance at how I trace the movements of the books with my fingers, and the too-quick shake of my head in response to his question.
"No, thank you."
I hug the books to my chest, knowing that it's childish. I want it to be charming, something an old lady would sigh and smile over. It's no shame, this secret, and I want to whisper it to every passerby. I love books, I live them, I breathe them.
Like clever shopowners, my family lies out one tempting choice on the heels of another. Don't show me any more, I wail, I can't chosoe as it is. One more, my sister promises, you'll take it without doubt, and I do. Bawdy, clever-- just delicious, like a box of chocolates that I know, oh I know I shouldn't eat. Anne Boleyn reclines passively on the front of the book, her liquid eyes following me as I devour an author's whimsy of her life.
A little poet in a white dress, Emily Dickinson looks a trifle amused at her companion of choice. A writer's placed havoc with her times as well, but there'll be no sordid affairs in her letters. A pity, too-- she would have enjoyed them so. Flutters of translucent paper guard her letters from prying eyes, like isolation stayed her purity.
Get these, too, I tell my sister, pushing two more volumes towards her. It stays unspoken that I'll read them first. I always do, even when she gets more angry than and tugs the book from my hands. You can't read it before I do, Camille, let me have it first for once! I shrug, but my eyes follow her as she slowly turns one page. I can read faster than Kat, she knows it more than I do, and it's a game we play.
"Do you want a bag?" the person working the counter-- I know he's a member of the sacred clan as well-- I can tell by watching his eyes. He knows my ways, too, from his wry glance at how I trace the movements of the books with my fingers, and the too-quick shake of my head in response to his question.
"No, thank you."
I hug the books to my chest, knowing that it's childish. I want it to be charming, something an old lady would sigh and smile over. It's no shame, this secret, and I want to whisper it to every passerby. I love books, I live them, I breathe them.