Paper, Ink, and Being Seen

 

Morning spills through the blinds and warms my skin. From the kitchen, coffee rises with citrus and smoke, eggs whisper in the pan, butter edges the air. A riff of heavy metal rolls from the speaker—drums like weather, guitars bright as sparks. My breath steadies. I wait for words. 

Silence stretches longer than I planned, so my eyes move to the shelves. Cloth spines glow in the slant of light. Pages carry the faint vanilla of old paper and a ghost of glue; when I thumb one open, it answers with a soft winged sound. Letters sit crisp on the cream—inky shapes with clean bones, little rivers of white running between them. I trace the margin with a fingertip and feel a burr where someone tore a bookmark free years ago. The book settles into my palms with that perfect weight: warm at the covers, cool at the edges, alive in a way that never hurries. 

Books taught me the music of turning—hush, lift, slide. They taught taste, too: coffee’s pleasant bite after a paragraph, salt from a yolk on my tongue while a sentence lands. They taught me to see the world in fonts and kerning, to love the steady climb of a line to its period. Every page holds a small doorway. Every doorway invites a truer breath. 

At home, my pages once drew laughter. My mother and brothers joked about the way I wrote, until the notebook closed. I carried whole essays inside my head, bright and unfinished, because the room around me stayed louder than my voice. Work years arrived with calendars and meetings; ideas kept their coats on and waited by the door. The mind remained my safest library.

I reach for the shelf again. Dyslexia still tangles lines and flips letters, yet I read. I move slowly enough to taste each phrase. I ask for neither fame nor fortune—recognition, perhaps just a sliver. More than anything, I hope for a listening heart.

So, I write this down. I hold a book, breathe in paper and ink, and say into the morning: “I see you, Dora. I see you, and you are loved.”