The Book

She considered the book, it’s dust jacket slightly ripped and cracked like the skin of some ancient beast. She considered it as one considers the distance between two rocks and whether they can leap over the rapids that swirl about the ankles or whether it is too far, and the threat of being pulled away and under too great. She had read it before, twice in a dozen years, and each time it had carved out of the emptiness some new need in her. It had made a bonfire of her world, and forced her to leap the dying ashes. Yet for all of that, she loved it. She loved it as the mayfly loves the setting sun, and like that brave creature she knew that the end is even more beautiful than the beginning, the last pages truer than the first. She ran a finger down it’s spine, the caress of a lover, lingering for a moment on the very edge, and like all lovers she parted with a whisper; “Not just yet. Soon, but not yet.”