Dog Ears
Memories are in the corner of the room
Adjacent to the desk
Forming pile
after pile
of reminders
of who I was and am
Some have spines facing me
Others only have the corners of white
As I run my fingers over the lined edges
Some with their corners folded in
The journey of reading frozen in time
through stains and tears on the pages
Patterned covers that bring back nostalgia
When I flip through the pages
For Christmas presents and visits to bookstores
For a time of innocence
That I can’t get back
At the same time, pangs of regret
that the happy tales of dogs and fairies
no longer strike my heart in the same way
The bookshelf that has resisted all efforts
To organize itself
To decrease entropy
No themes
only age and accumulation
A specific book is a needle
In that impossible maze
But to peek in without expectations
I find what I need
and more
All the past times crammed into a corner of a room
Easy to find, hard to appreciate
And when I look
Not mere pages printed with words
But afternoons curled up on a flowery sofa
And my mother’s voice echoing in my ears
surrounded by the familiar warmth of blankets
An ever-present friend
Characters that summon themselves
Even when I don’t have the ink in my hand
Words are not just mere letters
But reflections of thought
that continues to reflect back
ever twisting and mutating
The memories of these books I continue to come back to
Knowing that it is more
than a unorganized shelf
But a stockpile of what is and was
in my mind and heart