Books.
Why does every book I see remind me of you, even though I know you weren’t much of a reader yourself?
Every time I run my fingers gently over the leather cover of some old tome, the arrhythmic but consistent sound of flipping pages soon fades into the background and all I can feel is the leather of your Quidditch uniform - hard but smooth - under my hesitant touch. The heady scent of freshly pulled earth, crushed grass, sharp wind and musk and something just so you pulling my senses in a swift but hard embrace, making me light-headed where i end up wanting to either push you against the nearest wall or pull you as close as I possibly could.
But I never did any of that. All I did was touch.
Light.
Hesitant.
Fleeting.
Touch.
Then I acted like it was an accident, which it probably was. You looked up and gave me a slow, careful but warm smile, making me immediately regret not acting on my many previous thoughts....
Then you were gone.
And I open my eyes.
I didn’t realize I’d closed them; the sound of pages fluttering, quills scratching flooding my ears again. It’s soothing, the sound - something that’s there but we don’t realize it is, unless something even fainter catches our senses, unless we focus. Just like, unless we focus on the soft crumbling of sand beneath our feet, we don’t realize how loud the lapping of the sea actually is....
I pick up a book from one of the shelves and flip through it. It’s an old book with yellow and beige patches on the pages, the strings binding the pages are lose - barely holding.
Strings that were once white have darkened with age. None of the pages are white or unstained or crisp anymore either and it comforts me seeing how even lifeless, closed objects like books also change with time, how the years leave a mark on them too - some visible, some not. How their ties have gone through the test of time from one hand to another- some fingers gentle, some reverent, some caressing, some swift, some firm but careful but some rough and callous.
However, these pages never complain, all they do is hang onto those cotton strings for dear life, each leaf comforting the other in their gradual but inevitable change - changing in outlook, in strength, in their scent- but the essence remains the same, the words pages after pages cannot be altered - printed for life - by any of the numerous hands that handle them.
The loud, bold titles, the flashing page numbers often remind me of your sharp & piercing, at times clever & calculating but mostly warm eyes; luring me in- to read you, know you, dive into the story of your life and be a part of every climax that occurs- just like those bold titles on the cover page do. They don’t tell the entire tale but invite, pull one in for more and I (resist as I might) got pulled—slowly, drowning amidst the words, with just those lose & tattered strings holding me up, keeping me from sinking, from ending it too soon, helping me to reach - slowly, which yet seemed too fast- the dreaded end of Your story, Our story.
Yes, it’s our story now. I’m a part of it too now, have been for a while. I got too deep in it not to be, didn’t I?
I hope my fingers were gentle on the pages of your life; gentle & reverent & careful - yes, definitely careful - and shall I say even loving sometimes? But never rough and callous. I really hope not and even if I was I know you will forgive me, you were good that way, in forgiving.
I hope I didn’t disturb all your dog-eared bookmarks on the several pages of your well-thumbed tale. I did open them, I admit, but then gently set them back the way they were because I would hate someone losing my bookmarks and I thought so would you. I should also confess reading those little footnotes in your scratchy scrawl here and there. I’d chuckled reading some of them but some just made me think.
I will never confess about the letter I found, though, tucked deep between some of the pages. It was, to my surprise, addressed to me and something tells me that you never meant for me to read it but it reached me anyway making me feel both guilty and relieved for finding it.
Strange how words write themselves isn’t it?
Maybe the lifeless pages knew you’d never give life to those words and that it will be too late for both of us, perhaps it already is but at least now I know my role in your play, my mark on the crowded sheets of your life.
Now I know that you don’t like the sheen and unfamiliar feel and the sour chemically smell of new books either, that the Cookery books you owned have more food stains than actual pictures of food, that Tragedy is never your light reading material, and that our Romance was not that hopeless after all; and even though we didn’t reach the end together, it will still be a happy ending.
At least that’s what I would like to believe. I can do that, surely?
After all, it was Our Story.