Did you ever fall asleep with your face in a book?

Papyrichor – The warm effervescence of books, redolent with love and ink. Musty. The smell of words seeping in through the nose, the feel of paper flying against your cheek with every breath you take, heave: light and thin, like wind on butterfly wings.

The paper smell reels me in. I suddenly wish I could work in a library: all those arrays of books, big and small, old and new, in huge wooden cupboards, the thoughts settling like dust on the shelves. Ideas, like mothballs in the spaces between. The words hover in the air mingling with the scent of antique teak and parchment. I walk through the lanes that separate each track, the fiction from the travelogues, the poetry from the novels, the thrillers from the romance.

I marvel at the lives trapped in here, in these pages, in these words. If words were like stars, I could count them. The words hear me. Trapped for ages, between lines and pages, they become desperate to seek an escape. To embark upon a momentary flight! Leave their pages for a while to flutter about the walls of the old library room. The thoughts grow thicker and the shelves buzz with noise. The ground starts to rumble and the room fills up with strange waves of exhilaration. Ah, the sweet taste of freedom: escape! The shelves shake heavily, tumbling books all over the place. But wonder of wonders, the books don’t fall to the ground. They flow up, like little men on moon, hovering in the air. All around me the books fly about, fluttering open to pages unknown, the words flowing out like music from a lute, one after the other in distinct black letters.

Oh, what an awful librarian I must make! The place is a mess, with a thousand flying words, like unruly children prancing about. I need to put them back in the books or soon I’ll have flying children and mad broomsticks capers and what-not: a stardust casualty. It’s terrible to sport with magic! So I chase them about: “happiness”, “if”, “but”, “love”, but they escape. The words elude me: A futile chase! Like the disappointed summer child of failed butterfly trails, I flop down on the floor, defeated. The words take to the sky. The room fills up with voices coming from nowhere. Grandpa’s voice while reading bedtime tales, children’s whispers while furtively reading ghost stories in dark umbrella-tents, mother’s voice by the sick-bed, crooning fairytales. The words flow up, flying with the lilt of the music, the voices pushing them further upwards like wind under the wings. Up, up and above they go like a bird swooned by a faerie lullaby, dancing to the rhythm of the reading symphony. Up into the air, they light up the ceiling, hovering, shining, blinking like stars in the sky. I could count them now. On the ceiling, near and yet so far: “happiness”, “if”, “but”, “love”. The light of the words illumine my face, etching their shadows on my skin. “Happiness” on my forehead, “love” over my eyes, “if” and “but” playing in long shadows over my lips.

Paper thin. The words smell like ages past, and a love that never knew it was loved.

I float in the soup of a crumbling world – of words, I dream awake.

Breath upon breath. 

The smell of words seeping in through my nose, the feel of paper flying against my cheek with every breath I take, heave: Light and thin, like the wind on butterfly wings.