The Binding

by Bridget Collins

I hadn’t belonged anywhere for so long, and now this room, with its smell of leather and glue, welcomed me.

But the part of me that yearned for music and noise was the old, healthy part; I knew that silence, work and rest were what I needed now. Even if, sometimes, it felt so lonely I could hardly bear it.

We take memories and bind them. Whatever people can’t bear to remember. Whatever they can’t live with. We take those memories and put them where they can’t do any more harm. That’s all books are.’

‘Sometimes,’ she said, ‘what we do is very difficult. Sometimes it makes me angry or sad. Sometimes I regret – if I’d known what the memories were, I wouldn’t have—’ She stopped and glanced away. ‘Much of the time it doesn’t even touch me. But sometimes I am so glad to see the pain go away that if that were the only person I had ever helped it would still be worth it.’

Which was worse? To feel nothing, or to grieve for something you no longer remembered? Surely when you forgot, you’d forget to be sad, or what was the point? And yet that numbness would take part of your self away, it would be like having pins-and-needles in your soul

The darkness rolled and sucked like a tide, at arm’s length; and then, instead of drowning me, it receded.

‘May your darkness be quiet and the light come sooner than you need,’

Maybe I should have followed him; but somehow it went from too soon to too late, without the right moment in between.