Bibliophile

“But where are your books?” he wondered at her empty shelves.

“I sell them back after I’m done with them.”

Daniel didn’t understand what she meant, done with them. His own shelves were filled with books: books of poems, short novels, histories, paperbacks with broken spines, hardcovers in clear plastic sheathes on loan from the library. Some he had designed himself, cute little chapbooks with perfect bindings and bright spines, blue and red and black. Others he had bought from used bookstores, or borrowed from friends, or received as gifts from his well-meaning aunt. Each had some special significance. For his birthday, he had asked for the Oxford Latin Dictionary. Now that was a book. Two thousand one hundred and twenty six beautiful bible-thin broadsheets, every word in every author from Ennius to Augustine. Sometimes on Sunday mornings when he was feeling especially contemplative he would open to a chance page just to feel it with the tips of his fingers, to breathe the musty paper vellum, to hear the brush of the pages as they turned.

There were books piled on his desk, books crammed in his bookshelf, books filling both drawers of the little dresser by his bed, books stacked precariously on his windowsills. The idea that she had none was strange; it made him feel superior. Most nights, he read until he fell asleep, the Epictetus that he kept on his nightstand, or Hemingway, or whatever text he could reach from his white-sheeted mattress. In half-consciousness, he deposited the phrases in his spirit like raindrops, letting them pool and wash over him. In mornings, too, he would read. The books were important, they were a part of him. And suddenly he realized how alone he really was.

(A fictional version of self, in third person narrative)