In Which I Start a Blog
For as long as I can remember, I’ve always loved words. Inked letters on a crisp page. The sound of a page-turning, the crack of a new spine. Books were my obvious first love. Strange rectangles that made for an awkward shape in my small child’s hands, all corners and edges. Nonetheless, I adored them.
My mother, in the company of family or friends, is still quick to conjure up the image of a smaller me, incessantly shoving books into her lap, eyes pleading a silent question. This is likely all her fault, as she very rarely neglected a chance to read to me. The older I got, the less awkward the rectangles were in my hands, in fact, it became weird to see me without one dangling there, my finger wedged in between pages holding my place. The slim and artfully illustrated volumes of my childhood eventually grew, they ballooned outward and upward into different shapes and sizes, blossoming throughout my adolescence like some sort of garden weed.
I pilfered numerous paperback chapter-books from my elementary school, pitying them their cluttered home among the communal toys and blocks of my classrooms. I rummaged through my mother’s own collection of novels and assorted art books, nimbly tucking away copies I liked onto my own shelf. Which soon began to overflow and the books began to make themselves comfortable wherever they saw fit. Thick, dog-eared paperbacks thumped around in my backpack. At night I slept next to stacks of books…
