I will always return the books you lend me because I know they are important and remember you told me you are a collector of fine things and
in your bedroom there is a shelf where you have a collection of books in alphabetical order and sometimes you stare at the shelf when you are alone which happens more often now than you prefer but still you feel protected and rich not in the bank or investment portfolio type of wealth but rather the supply and demand type where others might want to steal what you have if they knew what these books meant to you
but they don’t know and you have them.
With me you seem to take pity, saddened at my tattered heart and invite me in and serve me fruit and watch how quickly I devour even the pits which are bitter and hard and say you have something that just might be the right thing for me at this time and go to your bedroom shelf pull out a rare book you found years ago at a garage sale upstate in a town that used to be thriving with a main artery flowing with stores and cafes until one day the factory that manufactured intricate embroideries closed down as the price to make them abroad under dark circumstances became cheaper and purchased it for a dollar from the owner who told you he lived through it all lost everything including his wife
who could not be cured from a rare disease of the heart when the town
started to decay her friends moved out and he began to write books and detach from reality sink deeper into a world of fiction with mansions and parties and gilded dreams she could not understand and one day she broke and he gathered all his beloved books then made a sign that read
rare books by unknown author
and stuck it in the hallowed ground where she once gardened and he looked at you with your hand-sewn white dress and recommended a rare book by unknown author who never used proper grammar or clear diction or the right punctuation and you told all this
to me as your cat remained transfixed on my eyes making me
a little uneasy and I finished the last strawberry and you said that each time you pulled this rare book from your sturdy shelf you needed to sit down on your couch because the words like minor chords made your knees weak and when you were deep into the book by the unknown author you wouldn’t eat for days or answer texts from friends because you had all you needed and even though you read the book numerous times the arc of the story near the end still leaves you with a sense of melancholy when the man on the bridge gives his hand to the woman with the simple white dress who is thinking about the end
looks into her eyes
as he helps her down and she feels herself helped down and you open the book and point to the chapter and say to please return it when I am finished
after I’ve thought about the end
Paul Rabinowitz is a novelist, screenwriter, poet, photographer and founder of ARTS By The People. His works appear in The Sun Magazine, New World Writing, Burningword, Evening Street Press, The Montreal Review and elsewhere. Rabinowitz was a featured artist in Nailed Magazine in 2020 and Mud Season Review in 2022. He is the author of 5 books including The Clay Urn, Confluence, Limited Light, Grand Street, Revisited and truth, love & the lines in between. Rabinowitz’s poems and fiction are the inspiration for 8 award winning experimental films, including Best Experimental Short at Cannes, Venice Shorts Film Festival, RevolutionME, Oregon Short Film Festival and The Paris Film Festival. www.paulrabinowitz.com
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