The bright colours of the covers gradually dimmed, and the book was pushed further and further into the dark corners of the shelf. It takes a piece of you each time, all that disappointment and rejection, and it becomes harder and harder to hope. Many more have simply not bothered to finish or pick it up at all. Other hands have read but didn’t see, or had seen but not understood. Every crinkle of the yellowed pages was a burst of enthusiasm, as if the book was saying, no, shouting “hello, you don’t know how long I’ve been waiting for you.” Meanwhile, the book glowed from the pleasure of simply being seen. He felt the jagged edges of pages torn and knew grief for all that’s been lost and all that he would never know. He saw the careless rips and minute breaks that had been painstakingly taped whole. The man felt the book’s loneliness and saw the places where it had shed tears. Its dust jackets were faded and worn, and when he held it in his hand and opened it for the first time, its cracked spine seemed to sigh, as if it had been waiting for just this moment to exhale. The book had been sitting on the shelf for a long long time.
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