Bookstore Jonesing

Emily's Used Books, Brainerd, MN

I am a victim of an infliction called “bookstore jonesing.”

I open the door and the aroma grips me first, sinking its papercut teeth into my nostrils. I willingly give myself to the musty, pulpy fragrance. I inhale like a stoner taking a hit. 

I am hooked.

There is nothing like the scent of my local used bookstore. Once lured inside, my senses become a mushy, short circuited knot. 

I lose myself in canyons of classics and I scale ravines of fiction. I bathe in the Sea of Forewords and plod through the Desert of Afterwords, while every syllable of every story whispers from the walls like stains heard but unseen.

Fluorescent glare guides me and skinny aisles beg me, stay for just a little longer.

Warning: this humble store is a black hole. Once its gravitational force sucks you in, you are an addict for life.

Ain’t it great?

November Fades

Green blades stretch through the snow, arms in the air, surrendering, submitting to the inevitable. 

Seasons shift silently, leisurely. November fades to winter’s will, like chilled wisps of smoke twisting in late autumn air; the sun becomes a stranger and the moon bathes in exquisitely long nights. 

We curl in inky shadows, hibernating, assured that eternity will last just a brief time.

Five months of midnight, blindfolded, those blades of green will sleep, buried alive under a compressed canopy of white. 

But the earth turns, the canopy dissolves with the trickle of spring and the blades raise their arms in triumph. 

The circle is complete.