Books are secrets waiting to be told. They are shoved aside on a dusty shelf or buried under a mountain of laundry that has still yet to be done. Forgotten by children in lieu of video games and flashy TV shows and passed off by adults. They always say they never have the time to read them… So they sit, stacked side by side in indistinguishable covers, dusty and cold. In each bound copy, stamped on each yellowed page lay stories of worlds you never imagined could ever exist… They stay in the same spot for years until you move, throwing them carelessly into a box on a truck only to stack them back on those same shelves in a new home.
But some of us know better. The books breathe life. Late at night when the world has gone to bed and our thoughts are running restlessly, they whisper to us from across the room, telling us to pick them up and crack them open. They offer a place to run away to when our feet are too scared to move. A place to hide when the world outside our windows seems too dark and too real. We find ourselves hidden amongst the pages and in the struggles and triumphs of our papery-selves. There is strength there to be shared, losses to be mourned and fights to have won. There are more dreams and loves and lies than we could ever manage outside of the pages of our books.
They suffer the wear and tear of being too well loved. Dog eared pages and cracked spines from re-reading the story of the prince and his heartbreak over and over late one night when our own hearts were broken to a million pieces. They have tea stains and hastily scribbled notes. Smudges from fantastic tea cakes and from our lips pressed against the pages in a show of great, knowing love.
In our books we find new worlds. We find the strength that we thought we did not possess. We find a shoulder to cry on and hands to lightly wipe the tears away. We find our knight in shining armour, our princess in the tower and our kingdoms to run away to. We find our own stories, our own words and words we never knew we wanted to say.
We feel sorry for the people who don’t read, or say they don’t have time. We laugh when people say “Its just a book.” or “You don’t need two copies of that” because to us, each book contains subtle differences that make them unique. We know the importance and the magic of books, even when the rest of the world has passed them by.
Δεν το έγραψα εγώ. Αλλά με εκφράζει κάθε του γραμμή. Είχα ανάγκη να το ποστάρω, αύριο λογικά θα υπάρξη μακροσκελέστατη ανάλυση της αγάπης μου για τα βιβλία. Farewell until then.
