Mark My Place

There is an urgency to a bookmark laying unused. What passage would it mark, on what words has it been placed? How many times did her fingers lay it down, snug against the spine, as she takes a shivering breath, book clasped to her chest and a gloss in her eye? The certainty, the joy, and the absolute solitude of a phrase so at home with her that it didn’t pause to knock.

How many stories has this slip of paper marked? How many chapter’s ends, and how many times mid sentence did it slip into place, a suspension of the torrent of words, an apology to the conversation caught just short.

It is forlorn, laying without purpose, but a memory of every time the last page was turned and the curtain was allowed, slowly to shut.

It is a well-worn pair of boots, the emblem of every path that has been walked. Within it are the caught breaths and the disbelief, within it is every bend in the road that lead to closed eyes and sunlight across her smiling face.

There is music there too. The rasp of fingerprints on paper and the dimly lit piano soundtrack pushing back the silence just far enough to duck under.

There is an ache and an ending, for when it is set down and unused it is because the path has been closed or completed and in this moment it is lost. Finished.

There is dust gathering on this bookmark. It is battered from long journeys. And yet, when her neck stiffens and her eyelids pull down at the corners, when she is stuffy from lack of sleep and the path stretches too long, she will reach for it and gently it will take the pages from her. Holding the words, holding the path, open and welcoming until the next time.