It can't be the end


So, I finished reading East of Eden. I read
it voraciously for days (not that long of a book
but I am a slow reader), and when it got down
to the last 50 pages or so, I became a slow
reader on purpose. I didn't want it to end.


I feel something close to empty. Silly, I think,
but some books move me that way. I know when
I have finished my reading, I will mourn not having
more to read or not finding some other something
to read that moves me the way the book I am reading
moves me.

My mother has always read and read and read.
Not just fiction, but a great deal of non-fiction,
editorials, essays, poems.

I could not like her very much for many years and
for various reasons, but I can see now why she kept
her nose in a book and why she feels the need
to pass books on to others.

My eyes roll beneath their lids, wanting to be angry.