A Book Of Poems Novels & Stories

Maybe even… sad. I clutch my chest. Not here. Not now. “Albert?” I look up too quickly, heart racing. It’s not Edward. It’s just Emon. But his brow furrows as he walks over. “You okay?” I nod, but it’s a lie. He knows it. Still, he doesn’t push. “I found something you might like.” He holds out a thin book, hand-bound, no title on the cover. “What is it?” He shrugs. “Some indie press thing. Local poetry, I think. The owner said it’s about being lost in your own body.”

I had never really observed them when I was here before. Most of the titles were academic—thick volumes on economics, finance, business strategy. But there were also novels tucked in between. Literary fiction, some thrillers, a few poetry collections. "Didn't know you read poetry," I called out. "Everyone needs a little beauty in their life," he called back. I smiled and continued browsing. Then I noticed something odd. There was a gap in the middle shelf, like several books had been removed. "Adam?" I walked toward the bedroom.

At ten she put it down. She picked up the Sicilian poet from the corner of the table where it had been since Tuesday. Page fifty-six. The poet writing about a harbor. About standing at the edge of it and understanding that everything that left carrying something came back carrying something else. That the difference was not loss but accumulation. That was what harbors were for. She read the page twice. She put the book down and looked at the kitchen. At the two cups and the quarterly report and the foundation files and everything assembled on this table that was the ordinary work of a life being lived honestly.

Isla The black envelope arrived on my doorstep at midnight, sealed with crimson wax imprinted by a symbol I did not recognize, a coiled serpent devouring its own tail. Inside, a single cardstock invitation, embossed in gold. “The Vault awaits. Your presence is required. Refusal is not an option.” No signature, no explanation. Just an address in the shadowed underbelly of the city, a warehouse district where the elite hid their dirtiest secrets.

The expression on Don's face was the expression of someone recognizing something he had known but had not yet heard spoken. Ernest said: "You said we are the fifth book. But the five books are: The Inside Account, The Ground Keeps, The Emergent World, The Ordinary Morning, and the journals. The journals are the fifth book. The unwritten book that the four written books approached. The journals are the inside account at its most inside — the building happening in the writing, not the writing about the building." Don was quiet for a long time. The fire settled. A piece of coal shifted, sending a small spray of sparks up the chimney. The February light had shifted again — the cloud had passed,

"No, it doesn't rain very much there. And I would love to visit Mumbai sometime." Unsure of what to say next, I let the conversation lapse. He was very much engrossed in his book and I didn't think he was going to let his attention waver much. I took a peek at the cover to find it was a poetry book. So I let out a small sigh of dissatisfaction as I closed my eyes and stretched out a bit more. I felt the heat of the rays press kisses against my skin and I sprawled on the chaise further, hoping to renew some semblance of the tan I had inherited from my mother. From the corner of my eye, I took a peek of him again to find him still captivated by the book.

My tears rolled and crept down my face and landed between the pages beneath and on my chest. I take the corner of the cover carefully and hold it between my finger and thumb. I open to a blank page. I then keep on going and I see writing on all pages. "Poems." I breathe. Most are written in blank ink, some in pencil. All of them are drawn with a careless yet wispy style of writing. His writing. I keep on turning the pages in awe. My eyes can't keep up with the endless stream of words. I reach the end of the book.

It's hard to focus without her, but I lead Axar into the small library with me as I begin to search. Having been alive for so long I've acquired many books and ancient pieces of literature. Some are in immaculate shape, others are torn segments and several pages, barely tethered together by bits of spine. Many of these are family heirlooms as well, handwritten and handed down to future generations for guidance. Some are my own notes and contacts, roughly scribed here and there and then stuffed back onto shelves. I find several books on banshees and a couple on cambions. I find some on death as well, and I stack it into my arms with the rest the pile. "Take this one too." Axar softly suggest

I only had a year to find my answers, no distractions was a good way to start. "Venus, honey, are you ready?" My mom called me from the kitchen, as I opened my bedroom door. "Yes, mom be right there." I called back. Walking towards the kitchen, I was singing Famous Last Words out loud. "I am not afraid to keep on living, I am not afraid to walk this world alone, honey if you stay I'll be forgiven, Nothing you can say can stop me going home. Can you see my eyes are shining bright? Cause I'm out here on the other side of a jet black hotel mirror and I'm so weak..."

He returned his attention to the bookshelf at the rear of his office, the one he’d been browsing when he’d first heard the strange sounds outside, only being made by the cats, after all. The top shelf held purely “literary works.” Poetry collections of Blake, Yeats, Robert Frost, and Shakespeare. Prose collections of Zora Neal Hurston, Hemingway, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Flannery O’Connor, and folktales collected by the Brothers Grimm. Novels, from The Man in the Iron Mask to Madame Bovary, to Villette and Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, to A Passage to India by E. M. Forster.