Wrapped Up in Books

In high school I once sat down in the aisle of our library's poetry section during a free period, opened a Sylvia Plath anthology, and read as my cheeks became steadily slick with tears.

I feel more at ease surrounded by pages than by people. The knowledge of so many who came before, the outpourings of men's souls, the covers sandwiching passion and pain and truth and lies, the words strung together like rain drops on a telephone wire. Just looking up at shelves upon shelves of sentences, of frustration and frenzy and last-minute edits and the phrase she refused to change because she felt in her bones it was the right one... it makes me so insignificant, and yet so in tune with the pulse of the world. So right.

As I was studying on my bed the other day I looked up to my bookshelf and Slaughterhouse-Five stared back at me, winking, and I couldn't resist pulling it down and flexing its paperback spine yet again. So it goes.