Appetite for Words

I love shelving books. It’s meditative to float through the alphabet and institute a preciseness that each title deserves. There is a symmetry to it and an art to the spine-out, face-out flow. I smell each one and feel its texture. When the moment is right, I dive into the words to satisfy the craving. Everyone has their indulgences, addictions, but it has taken me time to embrace my unique abilities. Sometimes they scratch my skin, squeeze my windpipe, or even burn layers of skin. For too long I wondered what was real, the world inside their pages or the one where I actually breathe. The routine of keeping the books contained on their shelves keeps me grounded in this reality, even when I crave to be inside them.

I knew I was different when I learned to read. Bombarded with imagery that overwhelmed the senses. Not only reading and interpreting the meaning, but experiencing the book. They can be smelled and tasted. A bit like a Jumanji trap, the words lassoed me, held me, tortured me, if that’s what they needed to settle their tale. Did authors know what was conceived in their words? The portal between the pages and human hands? But I alone felt what the characters felt, transported to gardens and ships, or even gingerbread houses and chocolate factories. “Imagination is powerful,” my teacher told me, which pacified the strange circumstances of my life for a few years. Eventually other children were frightened of me, and then teachers, and then my parents.

Calling the experiences daydreams made people feel more comfortable. I learned the hard way that no one believes in even the possibility of another realm. Words manifest in different ways, some more intense than others, and today I could not control the sensation of falling off a cliff. Exhilarating for sure, but eventually my natural reflexes take over. My arms flail wildly, disrupting my pile of books with multiple thuds.

Typically I get a few odd looks and everyone goes about their day, but just feet away the potent force of his eyes narrows in on me. Intense like the sun radiating through my skin, into my body and tingling down my spine. I furiously blink, attempt to refocus and restack the books. He studies my movements. “I’m sorry, that was clumsy of me. I didn’t mean to interrupt your reading.”

“I’m glad you did. I tie myself up in these pages and forget to breathe.” With an exhale, he gently closes the Vonnegut novel and slides it back into its spine-out position. “You snapped us both back into reality.” He implies something within his choice of words, and I sense more than just a love of literature. Although I am distracted when he swings his long dreads over his shoulder. The gesture feels too familiar, as though I have admired his hair before.

“Do I know you?” I ask.

“Perhaps you saw me at Union Bar?” More of a statement than a question from his nonchalant tone and casual lean against the bookcase.

“Yes. My friends and I were there the other night. That’s a coincidence.” He smiles devilishly, waiting for me to catch up. “Unless it’s not?”

“I heard you talking about your bookstore.”

“You’re here for me?” There is no masking my disbelief.

“Is that so improbable?” His question is filled with amusement.

Eyeing the leather jacket and motorcycle helmet at his feet, black boots and fitted jeans. Thin lines of tattooed words curve up his arms like snakes. I wonder what the lines say and what other tattoos are hidden under his clothes. His petite frame is muscular, densely defined all the way to his face only to be softened by the sky blue of his eyes. “Well, I would not assume to be your type.” A restrained laugh flutters on his lips.

“You mean beautiful, free, the matriarch of her friends, obviously humble, a woman with an insatiable taste for words and good wine?” Stepping toward me, his fingers gently touch my chin to inspect my face. “Your eyes change like autumn leaves. There’s suddenly an orange tint in that light brown. Do they change with your emotions, I wonder?” He leans in with absolute confidence, daring me to turn my head before he reaches my lips, which I do at the very last moment. His mouth grazes my ear, “Is your heart racing yet?” My breath staggers out, shocked by his boldness. Delicately sliding his hand under mine as he steps back, he lifts it to his lips. The caress of the kiss floats across my knuckles like a piece of silk. He then wraps my fingers around a small envelope, “I look forward to seeing you tonight.”

“Tonight? That’s awfully presumptuous,” quickly losing my timidity. “Who are you?” He collects his jacket and helmet with that devilish grin.

“Read the invitation, Plath.” I am shocked again to hear him utter the nickname that few people use as he strides away.

I examine the paper folded within. A thick, gray stationary that immaculately soaks up the black ink from his elegant handwriting. An invitation to his home tonight, signed E. It may have been curiosity that brought me to his doorstep, or just the fact that I accept a higher level of risk in my life than most, but those are not the reasons. No matter how unlikely, I sensed a kindred making my heart race. Could someone else have the craving? The ability that’s consumed me since I learned to read, the appetite that can drive my mind to the brink. Perhaps someone else is there, teetering on the edge.

His front door is open teasing me with a sliver of warm light and the soft hum of music. I settle my nerves and push through. The boots he wore at the bookstore sit meticulously straight, toes against the wall. I slide out of my own and line them up next to his. The entryway leads into a large, candlelit room, vaulted ceiling and parquet floor, but no furniture. There’s an apple crate, wine glasses, and a blanket splayed on the floor. Beautiful space, but the truly breathtaking sight is encasing the room, stacks and stacks of books taller than me. Hundreds of titles, maybe thousands, like pillars of words floating up to the heavens. I gasp and clutch my chest as though I am seeing the Taj Mahal. “Hello,” speaking more to the books than to my mysterious host.

“Right on time, Plath.” The man only known as E frames himself in the doorway from the kitchen. The backlight makes him a perfectly drawn shadow. I vaguely wonder how long this shadow has been watching me when I have a sudden sense that he’s always been there.

“You know my real name, right?” The aroma of something sweet wafts into the room.

“Of course,” without taking the bait. “Don’t be shy. I see how eager you are to explore. The stacks have a life of their own, always rotating and fraternizing outside their genres,” he teases. “I’m sorry there are no shelves to organize, but make yourself at home. I’ll open the wine.”

I glide my fingers across the first few stacks, then close my eyes and smell the pages surrounding me. Old paper and bindings, but also fresh ink just off the printer. Giovanni. Hughes. Shakespeare. Yeats. I hear their poetry and prose without having to open a cover. It could be called photographic memory, but I do not only see the page. After I read them once, the words and their meaning are always there, committed to my senses. My mind can submerge into their worlds. When it began as a child, I thought reading was simply a doorway to what I call the Literature Realm. It turned into a craving that must be satiated like eating three meals a day for nourishment, for my survival.

Lingering on Yeats, I am suddenly thrust into the Irish countryside with an unrequited love wrenching my insides. “Are they speaking to you yet?” His question startles me as he sneaks up to my shoulder.

“Wouldn’t that sound foolish?” Admitting nothing and shying away from him and my secrets. I inspect another stack. Angelou. Butler. Carver. Nabakov. It’s an ability that defines me, but also what eventually made my parents commit me to the psych ward. When I was little they said I was gifted, then I became the daughter with problems visiting one therapist after another.

“This is our world, Sylvie. You can be yourself here. I knew you were like me as soon as I saw you.” I snap my head to attention, still feeling cautious.

“Like you how?” His eyes drip with empathy for my question and denial.

“Must we pretend? You sensed it in me, and it’s why you are here. We all suffer in our own ways, those of us who have a tangible relationship with words. They caress us, torture us, push us into their realities. I watched you today when you thought no one could see. You love them, and hate them, for what they do to your senses. The pleasure and understanding they give you when people cannot. You can control the words now, but that wasn’t always the case, was it? Let me guess, one day you were showered with compliments about your imaginative brilliance and then you were in therapy for fantasizing stories and hurting yourself?” I tremble at his accuracy, and the memories he invokes. No one has ever understood, and it took me over a decade to accept that no one ever would.

“Advanced brain function, with a dissociative imagination and hallucinations that lead to self-inflicted harm. Doctors used all the jargon for me. My parents knew I was different when I told them about the ghost in the garden when I was ten. Realities were getting jumbled and started leaving physical scars. No one could understand that I almost drowned with Ahab, burned and resurrected in front of Montag, until I learned to control it,” I turn to E wiping my tears away, no longer pretending. Has he seen even a fathom of the worlds I have touched whenever I open a book? “Wine helps,” I admit. With that, my host and his magnanimous smile lead me to the blanket where the open wine bottle and fresh crepes wait for us. I must have been lost in Ireland with Yeats longer than I realized.

He pours. I swirl and smell, then finally taste. Another one of my favorite routines, second only to shelving books. We drink, laugh, and eat. Even though I have created normalcy, patterns and friendships in my life, I feel more content in this moment than I can ever remember outside of a book. “I have never met anyone else who travels to the Literature Realm. Nor have I met anyone who has ever believed me,” I explain, while finishing every last drop of wine.

“Literature Realm, that’s what you call it? Very apt. It is a gift to cross boundaries, I see it as defiance. I crave it as you do.” I am enamored with his bad boy persona and the way he looks at me.

“It took a long time to not see the craving as addiction to torture, rather than pleasure. Are we masochists?”

“It’s much more complicated than that, Sylvie. Origins of language and poetry tell stories of creation and the gods. We are intertwined in their meaning, connected to the raw power of the world they create. Words cultivate existence. There are others who cross the boundary, who feel words as we do. Of the ones I found, most hide from it, building impenetrable lives without books, which would be hollow for you or I. Others have gone mad, but not you. Not everyone can handle the touch of a ghost, a lightning strike, or a night so cold reaching for the top of Everest that your hands freeze to the book. I am drawn to all of you, pulled like magnetism across continents and oceans.”

His passion is explosive. I never imagined finding someone else to travel these worlds with me, desperate for words to devour us. My fingers gravitate to the lines on his skin. “I thought they were tattoos earlier, but...” As I trace the words, a visible shiver rolls over him like an ocean wave pulling the gravity from his body. He steadies himself on his knees, surprised at the sensation. “You aren’t quite like me, are you? What else do the words do to you?”

“Are you sure you want to go down this rabbit hole with me?” The complexity of his facial expression gives me pause. Eagerness in his jaw. The edges of his mouth tremble, but he harbors fear in his eyes. I use my lips to ease his tension. Sharing our breath, I kiss around the shape of his mouth. He smells earthy, like talc and sandalwood mingling at the beach. After I meet his eyes with confidence, he reluctantly pulls his shirt up and over his head. “The words chain me,” he explains. The lines do not only wind up his arms, but wrap around his back and crisscross his chest dozens of times. I follow the words with my fingers and crawl around him trying to decipher the language ingrained on his smooth, dark skin. “Don’t bother trying to read them. They are lost stories. The chains control me and where I can travel.”

“Are they your stories?”

“My father’s.” The answer takes me by surprise. Could our abilities be genetically conceived? Is there a magical gene?

“Your abilities are inherited. But this is punishment. How did they become chains?” He drops his head in defeat as if too painful to vocalize. I close my eyes and rake across his shoulder blades, feeling the words like sand between my fingertips. “They are not lost to me. I hear them like far off whispers.” I am suddenly filled with a sense of determination to unchain him, to let him defy boundaries again. “Perhaps if I find a way to read them, sort of tune my senses?”

“Taste them,” he whispers, almost as an offering. Kneeling behind him, I interlace our fingers and taste the words stretching across his back. Just as he said, it was like plummeting into the rabbit hole. At first, everything moved too quickly to control the realm. Thousands of jumbled languages jettison me through time. I see their origins. The first syllables ever written. Suddenly motionless under the night sky, the stars and planets brighter than I’ve ever seen with a melodic voice and music of a lyre narrating them. The ancient gods are defining language, ushering their meaning into existence, into the human realm. How are these his father’s stories?

My eyes bolt open, fearful, but unable to pull away from him as the chains take hold of my wrists. The words march like an army of ants up and around my arms. “I’m sorry, Sylvie,” both sincerity and excitement dripping from his lips, “but you are the strongest of all my creations. The only one who could train your power to carry these chains.”

“No, no! You tricked me. What are you?” I asked to embrace the stories and now they have me, curving around my shoulders, burning into my skin.

“Trickery is just another ability I inherited from my father. My brothers and sisters did not take kindly to a sibling born to a mortal woman who could cross realms. How dare I possess such power like the divine messenger himself. They chained me to this world, out of jealousy, but they did not understand the Immortal Pilgrim’s Curse they used. It generated even more power, like the ability to create your Literature Realm. You want to know what I am? I am words. Your addiction, Sylvie, your only love. I knew you were the one who could free me.” The chains weigh heavily on me as he releases my hands. They pull my body down to the blanket like cement blocks. His voice and posture rise with strength, an incorrigible laugh with satisfying bitterness echoes off the ceiling.

“Are you saying that you are a god?” E pays no attention to the question as he stands and stretches his muscles without the restraint of his chains. His body seems much larger than before, his candlelight shadow hatching into its true self. Stories of mythology, his family, are swirling in my head as the words tighten around my body. Who is the divine messenger? “Hermes, you are the son of Hermes.” He looks down at me then, towering over me while I lay in his mystical chains on the floor. I was forged from the power of gods to be easy prey. Is the joke on me? I have my doubts as the stories consume me. “The genesis of what I am is the byproduct of your sibling rivalry? You pieced me together like an experiment. How many attempts did it take to create someone who could hold your chains for eternity?”

“Many, over generations. Do you consider me Dr. Frankenstein? Leaving wild monsters behind, left to their madness in asylums or ushered to their death. Do you find the torture or the trick more disagreeable?”

“You know the answer to that. Torture is an old friend in the Literature Realm. Did you ever consider that I would have taken your chains willingly?” His face softens as he contemplates the answer. “Is that so improbable?” E smiles at the sarcasm in my voice and sits next to me again pulling my hand to his lips.

“Time will move differently now, becoming immortal does that. Perhaps you will learn to move with the chains as I did centuries ago.” He is confused, when I only blink at him in response with very little emotion. “I am astounded that you are not filled with rage.” The chains stop moving and I settle in with a deep breath. The stories are with me committed to memory, my skin as the page. I hear Hermes’ lyre strumming and see the night sky with Mercury orbiting, but I am also still here with E as if I am present in multiple realms. I may have more control with my mind than either of us realized, but I cannot move my body. Sensing the pillars of books surrounding me, I acknowledge that there are much worse prison walls. My human life may be over, but I can finally live in my Literature Realm.

“I would probably be filled with rage if you weren’t quite so pathetic.” His eyes bulge with shock, face growing cold and teeth grinding. “You gave me words, my one love, and now your curse. What’s next? Will you cross the realms and prove you’re worthy, fight for acceptance to be at your father’s side? Perhaps your brothers and sisters will have a new curse waiting for you, but this time binding you to the underworld. Do you not think your plotting and revenge scheme has been pure folly? Entertainment for the gods?” I begin to laugh as I imagine the gods watching E as humans would watch a sitcom. “I wish I could see it, your futile defiance.” I laugh more loudly, trying to echo through the room just as his voice had. “Oh you are a fool E, but go get ‘em, please. Maybe, someday, you can tell me how it turns out.” I continue laughing, hysterically. His rage boils over until he grips my throat, attempting to squeeze the life out of me, but he quickly pulls away. Not out of guilt, or love, or fear from turning into his father, not yet. For now, he cannot risk the chains locking onto him again. He growls with anger as I groan with pleasure and laugh again.

He marches to the front door like someone confronting their delusions. “See you, Plath, enjoy the chains,” he yells, slamming the door behind him. And he will see me again, when he comes slinking back one day missing his chains like phantom limbs. Then he will see me and know that I am words, his kindred and creation of love.