Post 12- Tori

Her small fingers are gentle on my worn pages. Her wide eyes sweep my ink over and over, as if she’s afraid she'll forget my words. As if she's memorizing them. My spine is well used, and bent out of its original shape. The corners of my pages are bent, and some are never straightened- these are her favourite pages. She marks them, and on days when she is sad, she flips through them. And she smiles even though the tears roll down her cheeks. On days like these, I wish I could comfort her, tell her that things would be alright. In the dark of the night, when she awakes screaming, scrambling to grip my pages, I wish I could scare away the terrors that hide in the corners of her mind, wish that I could calm the tremors in her hands.

 

Sometimes she goes months without turning my pages, and I can feel the dust weighing me down onto the table next to her bed. Sometimes she falls asleep with her hand on my cover, as if I can somehow keep the bads at bay. I wish I could. Oh how I wish I could protect her and her fragile mind. I suppose in some ways I do, I am the comfort she reaches for when the bads become too much, I am the extra happiness on sunny days. I am all of these, for her.