This Place of Wonder

by Barbara O'Neal

Bookstores can solve any problem, at least for a little while. It was humid and too warm inside, the lights bright against the gray day, and it all smelled of paper and glue and dust and humans and damp wool and coffee brewing somewhere. Only this place of wonders could soothe me.

That’s the thing about grief. It spirals up and up and up, revisiting us again and again, reaching out with

Here. Now. In this small space of nowness, I can breathe. I don’t have to be anything to anyone.