Old books have a weight to carry,
the weight of all the years behind
and on each page somewhere a line
marked in red as if to give it permanency
in the fleeting hours and the years marked in the calendar-time.
And each line marked is meant for someone to come and read it later and dip in the lake of the words to find the lost pearl.
Old books are forests with a smell of ink that feels like musk
giving away the secret code for the fawn to follow the trail.
I have borrowed old books often from the old libraries
hoping that I might get the traces of how you might have read and felt, how your heart and mind worked and left behind the signs in the hurried notes you scribbled in the narrow margins.
You were always the one who raced ahead of time
and I the one who followed the trail in the forest of cryptic signs.

Sushama Karnik (c)

Thanks for the image and inspiration Souheil Ghammachi

Thanks for the image and inspiration @Souheil Ghammachi

Souheil GhammachiTimeline

4 hours ago

All her life she’d loved books.
She loved the look of them,
the sweet weight of them in
her arms. Most of all, she
loved the feeling she got
every time she picked one up,
the feeling of holding an entire
world in her hands.  

• Lost in a Book
  by Jennifer Donnelly