It's Still Life

Prosery: Let the Last Breath Linger

some memories, like thin bells,
vanishing, a song faint and low.

A summer of being. Thirteen. Surrendering my mornings to the public library—piles of books, biblichor, waiting quiet as secrets. Quiet as a librarian’s finger to her lips: shush. I devoured the Dewey Decimal System. It became a fiery furnace in me, a puzzle burning with unambiguous order and sequence.

clutch the old ways of my heart,
the old part of light that I wore.

133.43: anything in the 100s was philosophy and psychology. But 133.43 was in the restricted area—by permission only. I memorised all the Remington-typed cards in that category, much like Mum read James Michener. Or Dad read addresses while delivering the post. My lips mouthed titles and authors—I hid in a dark corner, reading about thaumaturgy on index cards.

“That girl—she’s a few sandwiches short of a picnic,” I overheard Mum tell the neighbours, and they all laughed. It’s a joke, she told me.

And I slipped books back into their xxx.y=place, next to their familiars—a cosy fit, as if tucking the night into bed and switching off the light. Leaving them in a vacuum where no stars shine. Leaving them with their parts of speech and surprise endings, in silence and breathless.

they are kindly closed and put away,
but I don’t rest where they stay.