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.

Here the clock in the hall dredged up seconds like stones and dropped them again into the pool of the day, letting each ripple widen before the next one fell.

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.’

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 …

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

The clock ticks, dropping seconds into the air like coins into a begging bowl.