If Nobody Speaks...

I am holding a book that I have yet to finish. There are exactly sixty pages left and that is okay. I am holding this book in my hands, and I turn it over back and forth. I feel its weight and I like its softness. The weight of words. The weight of beauty. The weight of something that I am too in love with to let finish just quite yet.

And then I remember how it came to me.

We were in a tall narrow brick house. The house sat on the edge of the cold sea, and the wind whipped at them both. It was night and we were on the top level of the house. In the attic where the pitch of the roof made us forcibly bend forward. I sat on my haunches, she on her knees and we both looked at the backsides of books. My head was craned to the side and I smiled. I read through the many titles on the shelf, and there were many that I was excited to see. She sat to my left and was talking about how out of these many books, she had read quite a few and she told me which were her favorites. I was listening, but I was too busy thinking how great it would be to read the many and how much time that would take and how little time there really is for anything. She then handed me some. She told me to read them, but I didn't look down. I then fingered through some more books on the shelf. She looked at me and said, 'take them, no one will mind.' And so I moved them off the shelf and held them all in my hands. And then when the weight was too much, I said, 'this is enough.'

I then followed her down the stairs. I put the books down on a table and then, I sat on the couch while she went into the kitchen. After a few minutes, she set a tray on the table in front of us and she then crawled up next to me. Soon we were picking at different foods off of the tray and we talked. Soon she was asleep on my chest while the TV splashed lights and sounds all around. Soon I would wake her and tell her it was time and then I followed her back up the stairs and into bed.

Early the next morning we left that house. And the following day, early that next morning, I left her.

I am holding a book and laughing at its weight. But really, I'm laughing at the thought that words without other words are like all our stories if there were no love, and how in the end that, all of it, is what binds us all.

-Remoy