i might never catch a mouse and present it in my mouth to make you feel you're with someone who deserves to be with you...

dear big milk crate full of books,
we need to have a talk. now, i know what you're going to say. please don't. just...just...don't. it's not you, it's me. it's nothing you did. in fact, you were everything i could have dreamed of and more.

yes, you relocated my center of gravity every time you told a really good story. yes, you provided me with the armor and the weapons to defend myself every time someone called me "ugly". to this day, i never get to be the PRETTIEST girl in the room, but i quite often get to be the SMARTEST.

you also provided the ballast to stabilize my trembling car (it was probably as scared as i was) when i amelia earhart-ed my way from ohio to california. you steadied my bed when the faux-wood claw foot broke off the bottom. i sleepwalk anyway, and didn't need a downward slope to help the process. you elevated my photographs and flattened out my wrinkled papers. sometimes, you acted as tables, footrests, and even chairs. for each of these things, i love you.

...but it's so much more than that. you pressed the moisture out of every flower of any significance so that i could keep it forever. you allowed me to scribble and annotate on your pages so that i could help define MYSELF through the words of others, and never once complained about the disrespect. you provided a safe distance from which to confess my deepest affections to others in the form of books i gave as gifts. for that, i owe you.

i KNOW you have put up with a lot from me. you have absorbed too much smoke from sitting in countless bus stations, bars, and coffee shops because i wanted to be out, but didn't want to have to TALK to anyone. sometimes you acted as the world's best wing man when i actually wanted to talk to others, because the right book title held at jusssssssst the right angle does wonders for a girl's intellectual complexion. for that, you are irreplaceable.

this is why i'm breaking up with you (no, no, don't cry. it's going to be okay.) i'm not some hugh hefner-esque reader, trading you in for younger, prettier, newer books. in fact, it is BECAUSE you are so pretty that we need to split up. you deserve to be loved more than i can love you. you deserve to have your pages dog-eared, then reread and revisited time and again. you deserve to have your cover turned so often that the glue binding your pages together starts to disintegrate. you deserve to inhale the ghosts of flashlight hours under bedcovers because the stories are too good to acknowledge "bedtime". i've heard the cliche that "if you love something, set it free." instead i believe that because i love something, i shall find someone to make it happier than i do.

i promise that when i see you in the hands of another reader, i'll smile to myself. remember that i'll always love you.

...now, go enchant someone new.

love,
patricia

p.s. just for you, today's word of the day is palimpsest.