I have always lost myself in books. In fact, I have been lost in so many that they all come back, one at a time, and remind me what I felt then. I have a hard time pulling myself away from these thoughts of long ago words, like dusty dreams, that I often spend hours, fading away into the letters in my mind, thinking about what each book presented and what each made me feel. 

When I got older, I started pulling away from reading on my own time, because it was just too hard to get sucked into that whirling tornado of emotions, associated with whatever I was experiencing at that moment in my life. Now these nostalgic feelings can come from almost anywhere, from a sliver of a song that I don't know the name of, to a random photograph or even a certain smell at a certain time of day. 

Whenever this happens, I want to capture the wisp of a memory and bottle it up, neatly, with a label, but by the time I realize what it is, that bright moment switches off in my brain forever. I read relentlessly. I want to snatch my thoughts out of the air and imbue my printed words with them. Instead I write and write and write, until I strike the gold vein of my rich past, and channel it down, down, down, finally pinning it to a paper like a rare specimen with my words.

In these rare moments of poetic justice, I love my writing;

"At home I was immersed in the scent of love"

"I swipe my eyelashes, and think of butterflies, swooping--
but they crash into transparent glasses."

"From this window, I lean out and greet the world, my loudest voice from inside my mind, emotions I can't name come to the surface, and the sun shines her smiles only to me."

"but somehow, the scenes we played together in real life were infinitely better than the ones in my head."

These were the moments when my memories became wingless and fell to the earth, tellurian beings, living in my words, and, I hope, touching the lives of others.