The Matter of the Red Bookshelf

I own a red bookshelf. Not exactly made of wood. It is much more fragile than wood, which makes it even more dangerous the fact that I’ve been stacking books on it until the shelves form a half-smile.

Promise me you won’t break.

I push another book into a much smaller space. Is not that I’m a bad person to my books, but I’m a spaceless person, with a lot of books.

The top shelf for them…

The women I cannot catch a grasp of. Plath, Woolf, Sexton, Smith, Palmer… Women out of reach, the greasy bone glued to a stick and tied to my tail; women I chase until I’m tired, dizzy, seeing spots. Spots I wish were words, perhaps a vision, a damn miracle.
I wish I would look at that red bookshelf and close my eyes, pen in hand (or, let’s be honest, notebook beneath the fingers), possessed into a psychography session, into weaving the right sentences, a direct link with the other world, with those women so hard to find. They always seem to sit at the edge of that red-stained fake wood, ready to jump, ready to leave their books and bodies behind.

The middle shelf is where the magic happens. Literally. The old Goddesses dance around the literary crops, a pack of Satyrs carve sigils on those soggy planks, the red walls resemble steady oak trees, the sacred names of their leaves and their pages, the numerology of my favourite chapter combined with the year I was born.
Ancient Gods hold me, a hallowed Heimlich manoeuvre to exhort words from my mouth, the words that were stuck inside my throat, begging for air.

But when I try to say them, the spell goes backwards, the words retreat like scared eels to the back of my tongue. My mouth a cave, hiding them and many other critters, creatures from below.
My larynx a burning slide, where things I wanted to say play along with the things I wanted to write.

The bottom shelf is the bottom of my heart, addled memories, fading scents and dozens — dozens — of bookmarks. Old ones, new ones, promotional ones, special ones…
I wanted to insert them on my mind, pin good feelings, bad feelings, memories I want to return to, memories I never want to think of again.
But they just melt, half-squares, inside books I’ve abandoned. They mark only the passage of time from a read to another.
They maintain a kind of existence. The feeling that someone will come back to where they stop. They are the lit cigarette of eternity.

Someone will come back.

My red bookshelf is much taller than me. Much bigger. More impressive.
Whenever I try to write, I can sense it peeking behind my shoulders with its grandeur, its literates, its award-winning cellulose.

One day, I might be brave enough to face it in the eye, open my wild mouth and let my vulcanic words erupt, consuming every inch of fake red wood.

© 2020, Giulia de Gregorio Listo. All Rights Reserved

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