Short Stop: Pages

L.C. Hill

I open a new book, and I immediately begin to fan through all the pages and listen to them snap away from each other. I watch the words go by in a blur like those movies I used to make on a pad of paper when I was a child. I’d hold the end of it with my thumb, the images moving as one, revealing an entire story one page at a time.

I open it in half, and then in thirds, and then in fifths, bending it open and stretching its rigid spine until it loosens up. I run my hand down the middle, both sides of the book on the palm of one hand. I run it over and over on the pages at each fraction until it is soft, until it doesn’t take so much to open it, and my hand burns a bit from the friction on my skin.

I force it to close after forcing it open, and I push it so that it will lie flat again—like it hasn’t felt the air on its pages now, like those pages haven’t been changed by my touch. It will never lie flat again. I hug it tightly to my chest to feel the bulk of it, the bulk that’s permanent from being made un-new.

I realize I do the same with people.