Do you have a favorite book?  One that you actually have in either hardcover or paperback? The pages have some fraying by now, and a few might be dog eared. Do you pick up that book every now and again and revisit the story?  Even though you know how that book ends, you read anyhow.  There are stories at times that are worth that revisit, even though nothing changes.

More often than not, your journey through those old pages can make you a little melancholy. After all, you know the good and the bad the ugly and the beautiful so hitting those highs and lows again is sadness in a form.

Sometimes though you still manage to cheer the victories. You still smile at the jokes, perhaps even laugh out loud. You still hold your breath at the turning points, understanding that your protagonist is still going to do what they do, but the rush from that revisit has you feeling that trepidation.  Does your heart race, perhaps skip a beat?  I know that happens to me. Without exception every single time, I open that first page, knowing what that last page is…..yet I stand ready to risk it all.

There are some who will point to my masochistic tendencies and assign that reason. I cannot say they are 100% wrong.  There is more to the story though, my story, the one that I keep revisiting.

I am flawed and complex, that should not be a surprise to any of you constant reader.  Some very simple things make me happy and some very convoluted things enter my space and wreck shop.

Since my early 20s though there is one story, one person, one theoretical romance that I hold sacred and refuse to let go entirely. Perhaps it is my refusal to accept failure, that tethers me to this novel.

In my heart though, I stand strong in my truth that this is where I belong and my obstinace won’t allow me to walk away. Even though I know how the story ends, I take that walk through the chapters.

There is a level of living that happens in that book that doesn’t exist elsewhere.  There is life and death and a level of experience that compels me to try to fix this, always to try but never to succeed because…that is not how our story ends.

As I populate my new surroundings one name haunts my dreams. Dreams aren’t always at night.  There are times those dreams are in the daylight with painful accuracy and defeating sound. That name stands still….reminding me that I haven’t opened that book in the longest period of time ever.

I sit here with the book in my hands, knowing it would take less than a calorie to open and hit page one. I sit here with the book in my hands knowing that the last page is brutal in ways words cannot describe.

Burned to the front of that book, fortified in blood sweat and tears is that name. I know that should I call it out like Candyman he will appear. What I do not know however, is do I have to strength to survive that ending —- again.

 

Aphrodite Brown