Lucy The Eggcademic (she/her)’s Self Care Prompt — Read Them!
The Books That Haunt Me
A nagging inheritance
They sit untouched on purple shelves, whispering behind my back that I’m a slacker, laughing at my schedules that have no time for them.
They were his, my father’s — a complicated history and a worse inheritance — junk and wild cats and his body dead for days.
But, there were books, there were always books, even when he had nothing else, there were books.
Those not soaked in cat pee or housing arachnids, roaches, and mildew, boxed and brought to a house not that far from his, but far enough he never visited and that was the point.
Fourteen years and still, they sit waiting to be cherished and I want to and I need to but our history built a wall, thick and high around them.
I read some Cather as a child, and many Thurston tales, but not between those covers, not on pages he touched.
Not their fault, shelves of innocence that mock my immaturity at sixty-six, floating to forgiveness but an ocean from forgetting.
They beckon me, remind me they have histories, too and so many stories to share, stories I will never know like I didn’t really know his.
And, I don’t want a life of less as the years become fewer— so, I will chip at that wall until the books and I are free, and I will read, knowing he didn’t leave me much but he did leave these books.
© Dennett 2020
Inspired by this prompt from Lucy The Eggcademic (she/her):
