"Hesitation equals Hell. If in doubt always grab, then you have what you did not have," she muses, vanishing quickly. I never know where. Through the always open door or up into the old wooden rafters in the ceiling?
I never actually see this sagacious ghost from the nether world of books, I have christened "Marya." But one time I thought I did. A regal, shining form of human outline fleeing across my vision like some splendorous goddess. Later I realized it was a trick of the sun glancing off the metal space heater in blinding refractions.
Another time, a blowy day was scratching tree branches against the windowpanes and I thought I saw her escaping in the bowed headlong rush of those branches.
Sometimes I want to call out to her, but laugh at that because only I know her name.
Yet some days I feel her real as my own two hands that open these books with such pure enthrallment and discovery. It is then I feel strangely at one with her, accept her capricious ways.
If I turn from a shelf in sudden wonder and inner riches, but am stuck with a nagging contextual query, I feel her jostle up beside me and take me off in a spin towards the rare book section where, like the answer to some hidden Grail, my nagging quandary resolves euphorically.
Down the aisles she is like my searching shadow trailing, whispering in my ear, "Take your time. I can wait. I will always wait for your treasured selections, my embattled, stalwart book lover!"
Dedicated to the once revered small used bookstores that have now all but vanished.