It was dark and musty, yet smelled warm and unusually welcoming. She walked in, taking in all that was around her, her eyes darting from shelf to shelf as she scanned all the names, titles and covers. Some were glossy yet boring, some were paperbacks with torn edges, a few were large & voluminous but incomprehensibly hollow, while some others looked thin and worn out but had a magnetic pull she couldn’t resist.
But she was different, she wasn’t here to pick them up after judging by the cover. Walking up to the far end of the room, looking at something that caught her attention…
She curiously picked it up
Unprepared for what it had in store;
a hardbound cover
creative yet simple,
with a title woven in gold
royal but subtle,
hundreds of pages
some crisp, some yellowish,
thousands of lines
and several more in between,
millions of words
some simple, some metaphorical,
and innumerable thoughts
few transparent and clear
and several concealed and unrevealed.
Its an open book
with secrets and promises,
A kind heart
covered in wounds and scars,
A clear conscience
woven with lies and deception,
A simple statement
with four different interpretations,
A side that you see
and a side my mirror sees.
Every person is like an open book, eagerly waiting to be read yet so carefully hidden away. Pages loaded with rich experiences and incidents, the book is a compilation of all that their multi-faceted self wants to tell the world, yet be discrete about.
The pages that all of us hold deep within;
Few for the world to read and decipher,
Some for them to interpret in their own ways,
And yet others hidden from the eyes of the world,
carefully encrypted, yet blatantly honest.
We’re all books, but we’re all readers too. Great writers, and equally great readers. Each of us has this beautiful book within us, written with years of love, months of learning, weeks of heartbreak, days of joy and minutes of realization. With our minds raging with excitement and our hearts racing with nervousness, we’re all yearning to be read and waiting for that reader. That person who delves right into the book without a minute of hesitation or doubt, brushing through its pages deciphering those hidden messages, uncovering the encoded truths, seeing through the webs of deception and interpreting the twisted similes, all the while respecting the sanctity of those words and whole heartedly accepting them.
But remember that just like you’re eagerly waiting, there are so many other books in the world too, waiting with the same nervous yet eager expectation. A writer’s biggest joy is to have someone read her book and understand every miniscule detail about it, including the ones that are so carefully hidden between misleading lines and metaphorical phrases. So as we wait to find those readers for our book, maybe its time to look at a few books ourselves too and become those non-judgmental and open readers that writer is looking for?
You never know, in the process of bringing a smile on that reader’s face, you may end up finding your much awaited reader too…
A Piece of Me 