What If

The words sat in bold, raised scripts on the page. Script smaller than the usual naïve ones in books. The other books. So the words, ‘He poked his tongue in his cheek and smiled.’ I poked my tongue in my cheek and smile. That honey filled moment when you act something out the way a character in the story is doing and suddenly the image you had in mind on reading that line is alive, and you made it alive. Hadie would say this habit right here has some weird connection of my obsession with cinema. Cinema is the word, really. Movie sounds hollow, naive. Movie sounds like sour coffee, while cinema, well. Cinema sounds like tea. So much more character yet so much less gaudy. I remember where I learnt that word from, ‘gaudy’. Eighth, English lesson, being aware of every atom and molecule in the room, and yet this senseless mull of obliviating myself from the rest of the world, Lady of Shallot being read out in a soft, lilting tone. She used to wear pastel coloured yards of grace and ill applied kohl in her eyes, her accent standing out. Maybe it wasn’t Lady of Shallot, maybe Daffodils. Either one, there is this vivid memory of me scribbling words and phrases down by margins, and her, teaching, teaching, as if she is Lady of Shallot herself- locked away away and away in a tower where she weaves, eloquent, sad, in a white gown.

And then there are some books that you can read, all the while building a cocoon around you. A protective sheath. A disappearance. A better universe altogether. If I could disapparate, like Rowling ever so wisely says, I would. I would feel my breathing toughening, my whole self being tightly woven around and transported to somewhere else. I would be disapparating like cats and dogs. Like Potter and Granger. Like Black and Lupin. They build up, arguably the most wholesome part of my childhood. So I would disapparate right into books, and out of them into more books. Who needs a race, who needs revolution, who needs hope, who needs anxious knots, who needs losing and finding and losing and finding and losing and finding over and over again. Disappear. Fly away. Those tiny bold scripts, I could live through them, by them and in them. I think, I think (And I might as well clarify here that I’m a meagre, meagre piece, a tiny dot. Or tot. Bah.) that is why people write. And read. To live through them, by them and gratifyingly, hopefully, gratefully, in them. In there, when you read ‘He laughed’, you conjure up this image of a lean being, without a face, or a shadowy face, fangs bared, eyes twinkling (eyes are visible, yes), laughing. The word is justice. The words are justice. You read ‘She sits and cried’ , you feel the salt beneath your lids and an extra heart lumped up at your throat even before you finish the sentence. You read ‘He died’, and your world falls apart. You read ‘Taking a huge bite of her bread, she wiped the cheese off of her lips’, you feel the warmth of the cheese dripping down your soul.

Who needs peacing out. Who needs humans. What worth is war, and what, pigeons? I am living by words and breathing paragraphs in. I am waking up to the smell of paper, my clocks have felt tip arms and numbers scathed in a royal fountain ink. My soul, well that is one long novel.