USED BOOKS

 Finding stories within those pages that are rusty, crumbling

holding the smell of dust and sun, 

used books that find a home are the products of love and redemption.

They travel places more than their readers, to a beautiful library in a home,

to corners of a room to aisles of a crowded public bus,

falling asleep right next to the pillow, 

waiting to be picked up before the next journey, twice or more. 

Finding stories between the lines or on top of those pages,

written in pencil on the edges, or underlined for

 that one last skim through your favourite lines.

Or that one highlighted line that sums up your entire life,

is the sole reason why the next one picked it up,

neither bragging about it being a literary masterpiece nor of being spoilt for choices.

The tan rings on the pages remind one of a warm evening

it might have spent with its lover drinking coffee.

But what made him leave the cup on these pages that

left a mark on it forever?

A random discovery of Nick Drake happened in one of those pages,

you looked him up on the internet, listened to his songs

thanked the person who scribbled his name on the pages of the book

you had picked up to read.

Will you let it find another home, leave your stories for another's imagination

with new scribbles and highlights or,

 keep it to remind you of the parallel stories the folded pages told you?