The Lonely Heart

 

     Don’t go in. Don’t buy another book. Don’t step on a crack. But I would rather be here than anywhere else, making myself a votive offering among worn wooden shelves. There are legacies: the last rivulets winding their way down the gutter and these books, tight lipped and pressed shoulder to story, waiting to reveal theirs. I come here to miss him. These lives breathe in and out. Lift any cover. Tom gave Marie this edition with all his affection balled up in the pen strokes. What is my legacy? The Thai food cooking from morning to night, permeating each belonging with the smell of fish sauce infused with ginger and lemon grass? Will those things tell how I held my breath from that early summer day until the last or will they only remember the sound of someone singing out Tom Yum Goong?