fictionnonfiction

I'm falling in love with ink on bound paper, as usual. Print is proof and I believe every word even when I frown my disagreement. Hungrily, I read and believe myself to know; I come to bed at night and gather the books I'm reading and toss them on my bed because I never know what mood will hit when I am under the covers and sliding my eyelids up and down. As I step off the floor and into my sea of books I feel loved, what a lucky girl to lay down with Kerouac and Julio Cortazar and Toni Morrison at night. They ache their love through their words and show me how their eyes are special and they see to their characters' cores, so maybe they will see to mine.

My dictionary is a constant part of the pile, filled with post-its and highlighting of no importance except to myself. The tiny pen line illustrations are amusing and entrancing, I contemplate a tattoo of the radius picture, complete with definition and pronunciation guide. The bookbed has been part of my life since I can remember. I pretended to be afraid of the dark so I could leave the hall light on and my bedroom door open and sneak read in bed, other kids used flashlights but reading takes both hands. Now, if I can't sleep, I pull any old thin paperback off a shelf and hold it in my hand with my fingers between the pages, as if to mark my spot, but the book falls out of my hand anyway and in the morning I do book searches under the covers and around the bed until I find them and open the pages again.

When these writers write, I read and yearn for them and wish to hold their words in a form more tangible than text, as if I could. I want Jack Kerouac in the flesh, telling me I am an angel, not like some pickup line but that he can see the wings I never realized I had. I want this passage to be for me:
"she says, 'You don't look like you need a haircut' and appraises me, and I know she loves me, and I love her, and I know tonight I can walk hand in hand with her to the starlit banks of the Skagit and she wont care what I do, sweet--she'll let me violate her everywhichway, that's what she wants, the women of America need mates and lovers, they stand in marble banks all day and deal with paper and paper they're served at the Drive-In after Paper Movies, they want kissing lips and rivers and grass, as of old--"

I am selfish and I know, but so are they all and you all, we want things and convince ourselves we don't deserve them and so give them to other people. I give, but I take, too, and tonight I will fall gratefully asleep again with stories all around, alone for all intensive purposes, and roll around on the pages and make small contented sounds until the sun rises.