June 11th, 2010
I feel like I’m a book that’s been dropped in a puddle, and then left there. Open, my story bared to the world, soaking up the dirty water from the side gutter. I can feel the rain patter on my open pages, hear the people scurrying past on the sidewalk above. The cars drive past, spewing more filthy water above me. Every now and then someone will step off the curb to cross the street, and their foot will hit me. I will get excited, and think:
“Here! Here is the person who will save me! Who will pick me up, and wonder at how someone could just leave me here to rot. They will shake the water from my pages, and gingerly carry me under their arm to someplace warm, where I can dry out, and my story will be legible again. I will have purpose and closure.”
I am giddy with anticipation as the person, their umbrella temporarily cast to the side, peers down at what they have stumbled on. Then, a look of disgust crosses their face, and they kick me aside, irritated at being disrupted. Away they run, across the street, to continue with their busy life. Meanwhile, the rushing street water tears at my now sodden and mushy pages, ripping them bit by bit from my cover, stealing the pieces of my story away, down the drains to the sewers below. Some of those pages I haven’t even had a chance to read yet. Perhaps they are better suited down there.
In time, the hope that someone will find me and believe I am worth salvaging is faded and distant. My cover softens as the pages have, and I resign myself to the life I have here. I have gotten use to the water, and it’s not so cold anymore. Eventually, it will take me bit by bit, down to the sewers, and out to the sea. Until then, I will lie here, and watch the raindrops fall from the heavens above, and listen to the pedestrians laugh and scurry down the sidewalks, and hear the drone of car engines as they zoom by. It’s taken on something of a musical quality, and now that I know the words, I can sing along.