Returned With Notes
romanceEveryoneUnder my 'WHO ARE YOU?' the blue pen wrote: 'Not yet. If I tell you, you'll picture someone, and then I have to live up to the picture.' 'Finish the book with me instead. I only reply to notes. Deal?' Below that, they underlined a sentence in chapter 9 and wrote: 'Start here. Tell me you didn't cry.' I did cry. In 2019. In a laundromat. Deal.
Chapter 15, a blue note stops me cold: 'Real question. Why did you give this book away? People don't leave their favorite book in a box on the street for no reason.' They're right. There was a reason. I sit with the pen for a long time. Then I write it: 'Someone used to read it to me. They're gone now. I couldn't look at it — but I couldn't throw it away either.' I return the book. Slowest three days of my life.
What happens next?
1 ways forwardThree days later the book is back, rubber-banded to a second, thinner book. Poems. In mine, under my note, the blue pen wrote: 'Thank you for telling me. Books that hurt need company. So do people. Page 33 of the thin one is yours now.' Page 33 is a poem about a door left open. Under it, small: 'I'm the one who leaves the box door open every morning. That's me saying hi. Come say it back sometime.' I did. Hello is easy when someone's already read your margins. The box door stays open. Both of us check. Every morning.