Let Me Tell You a Story

 Let Me Tell You a Story

by Elixandra Alvarez

The shiny, smooth spine feels cold under my fingers as I run it across the different sized
books on the shelf. It feels like my fingers are walking up stairs, and each book was a
landing where a new neighbor lived.I look up at the clinically white glaze of the library lights.

      
It's funny to think of books like being people, with spines and a face and thoughts and
memories. Are we books too? We are read and judged by our covers. We are passed down from hand
to hand, the story getting better as time passes. Sometimes our pages are ripped like leaves under a rake,
or folded down when someone has decided to take a break from us. Sometimes our margins are written in
and sometimes we are protected like jewels.

My father read to me every night. The move from the warm tropical air of the Caribbean to the cold
unforgiving winds of New York City created dragons for me to slay. The language was just another
barrier I had to cross. And reading was my bridge. We would sit cozied up every night, sometimes
the same story and sometimes a different one.We always came back to the one about the owl. She
couldn't hoot like the others but she didn't let that stop her from being amazing. She was my favorite.

"Eres la lechuza más inteligente de todas, No importa que no puedas ulular."

    I would fall asleep, lips pronouncing inaudible "who" sounds.

    I realize I've lost my mom in the library's mystical elegance. Six books under my arm,
I go on a quest to find her. It won't hit me until I'm two years into college how I long to be back in my
room, back in the corner of the library, submerged into worlds I can never really travel to but always
dream of.