Somedays I walk through bookstores, just for the smell of it. To hear what they quietly whisper to each other, bumping up against spines, running a tired finger along their backs.
Somedays I wonder about the magic contained in words, about the magic that seems to sparkle and crack in the dust of bookstores. Someone's breathing, beating heart, laid down and quieted in typed print, only to explode and live again in someone else's mind.
Perhaps the only way to beat the bittersweet impermanence of this world is to write. To write and to hope that someone reads. And even if no one reads it, even if no one sees it, to continue to write. To continue to breathe and lay your beating heart down into something that will outlast our crumbling bodies and our aching hands. To outlast the twists of fate and the he said-she said moments. To outlast the lack of sleep and the pitter patter of your child's feet. To out last the break of your heart, and the mending of your shoes.
To live amongst the moon and the sun so that someone, somewhere, will know that you lived. Will know that you too, broke, and you too loved, and you too, once had a beating heart.
Perhaps words are the only chance we have of being remembered. Words and the way they make you feel.
I would like to be remembered for words, but also for my hands and their disappearing creations. Cookies and watercolors, cakes and lost notebooks, dreamcatchers and wiped tears, holding hands and holding you, and all the things in between that make up the span of a day.
I think we would all like to be remembered, even if only for the simply perfect way that your eyes curve and crook and squint at the sun. Remember as much as you can. And then give it all back.
