The Read

    I found it upstairs tucked in a bedroom closet, not as if it had been forgotten, but ignored. The leather wrapped cover was clearly aged, like an antique, yet the book appeared to have been well handled, treated like a treasure. A face of a wolf embedded into the front stood out to me, catching my eye above all else. Strangely though, a single hand print in the dust held to the book, telling me that recently it had been read, but as if the reader had never let go.

    The first page read "Writings of Julio Varacova", but there was no date, and the following pages revealed no clues as to who the writer was exactly. He wrote various things, sometimes he wrote in Spanish as if the rhythm could only be captured in the language, and it ranged from love stories to nightmares, but none were about him. Sentences comprised experimentally, many times oddly, but they held onto me.
 
    My attention became swallowed, and I did not want to cease reading, as if the book leaned in closely, whispering in my ear like to soon reveal a secret. It only caused me to listen more attentively. So engulfed now that my mind did not linger or drift away, not to the time, the place, or what it was that I had been doing before I began reading. What was it that I was reading?

    I stared outward to my self from within the book, as if all that I was in touch with was my conscious, which was held trapped in the pages of the book. I could see my self, as if another person, but it was me, and my face held nothing but a blank stare, I was hollow. The light began to escape as the book slowly shut it's wide mouth, my mind still caught inside. Whoever this writer was, he certainly knew how to capture the reader.

Ervin M. Amaya