The Echo of Old Books

by Barbara Davis

There is nothing quite so alive as a book that has been well loved.

“Books are like people, Ashlyn. They absorb what’s in the air around them. Smoke. Grease. Mold spores. Why not feelings?

Without a reader, a book was a blank slate, an object with no breath or pulse of its own. But once a book became part of someone’s world, it came to life, with a past and a present—and, if properly cared for, a future.

you are the one I regret most. You have been the capital error of my life, the one regret for which there can be no absolution, no peace. For you or for me.

“Women aren’t usually consulted on wars. We send our husbands and brothers and sweethearts to do the dying, hold the pieces together while they’re gone, then pick up what’s left when they come home—if they come home—but we’re seldom asked what we think.”

It’s a place I’ve never been, this sensual war of words. And yet it feels startlingly familiar. A déjà vu of the body. A knowing—of where it might lead and how it might end. All at once, I understand the danger I sensed earlier. It’s this. This moment of needing to prove something to you. And perhaps to myself. Something even I don’t understand.

Your eyes hold fast to mine—a deeper blue than I had previously noted, with small gold flecks around the pupils—and suddenly I’m terribly warm, which I suppose is what usually happens when one plays with fire.

When no one cares about you, they don’t wonder where you are or when you’ll be back.

But it would have felt like surrendering, and I find I’ve surrendered quite enough of myself lately. To

what shall I call you?

“I don’t care. As long as you call me.”

“I was a girl. It’s what girls do. Write silly poems about our angst.”

“It was just one of those childish fantasies you grow out of. You know how it is. You’re suddenly passionate about something, so passionate that for a while it consumes you; then something happens and it’s over.”

He said all truly good writing—fiction or nonfiction—has a heartbeat, a life force that comes from the writer, like an invisible cord connecting them to the reader. Without it, the work is dead on arrival.”

You’re the answer to a prayer I never thought to pray

This ache to be near you—to belong to you—has been a part of me since that first night, and now I know it’s been a part of you too.

I’m yours forever. Irrevocably. Indelibly.

“A woman doesn’t forget the man who shatters her whole world, Ethan. Ever.”

I wonder now and then if you ever wonder about me. If, when you close your eyes, you still see my face, hear my voice, feel my touch? Or am I already a part of your past? A shadow that briefly crossed your path, nebulous now and unshaped?

you have filled my brain, leaving no room for anyone else. Even with an ocean separating us, I could feel you, like the ache of a phantom limb.

No one will miss me. And I will miss no one. Except you. But then, you were only ever a figment of my imagination.

In every wound, there is a gift. Even the self-inflicted ones.

The number of lives we are capable of living is limited only by the number of books we choose to read.