She Reads.

She reads Anna Karenina and discovers herself in both Alexey and Anna. She is disgusted with her own infidelity; she is disgusted with his apathy. She is disgusted with the way he refuses to communicate and the way that he refuses to address LIFE. Life and her ugly, vicious, bitchy problems.

She reads Persuasion and longs for a letter like the only part of the book she considers worth reading. She wants someone to care like that for her. She wonders and ponders whether that man really exists. Is it fair to set such an expectation?

She reads Twilight and has anxiety over the way the writer twists and wraps (and warps) her heart around the lead vampire. She learns to detach herself from the books and laugh over the silliness of it all.

She reads the Bible and sees herself in every fall of all of His children. She has been there before and frequently. Maybe not adultery in action, but in thought. Maybe not idolatry with gold, but idolatry with materials. She has turned her back on Jesus; she has walked away from the only intelligent and difficult choice to pursue the heart-deadening, alluring shards of glass the world has given her to slit her wrists. She comes and goes often.

She reads The Unvanquished and finds herself longing for a time when communication was solely dependent upon word of mouth. She wants to find herself in her kitchen, cooking with the servants, finding the soldiers dragging back from war, shouting the news of the finality of the war. She wants to provide the gift of shelter to John Wilkes Booth, while being completely oblivious to the death of her country's leader.

She reads A Brief History of Time (of course only the illustrated version). She illustrates his writings further for a better understanding. She looks into the strange thoughts of a genius man and wants to travel into space with His particles of light, His waves of light. She wants to become part of imaginary time, to travel endlessly at the quickest speed known to man. To feel the crushing weight of the Universe. To traverse the depths of the multiverses in which the rest of her soul lives.

She reads of Dorian Gray and relates to his desire to remain forever youthful.

She reads the Color of Water and ponders the struggles of a black man with a white mother in times when these things were taboo.

She reads Fight Club and relates to the violence, the chaos, and the anarchy.

She reads Frankenstein and relates to his inability to be human.

She reads Sex God and highlights the whole damn book because it all reminds her of her. And the rest of the world, which is obsessive about sex in every form.

She reads Abba's Child and cries at Grace and Love.

She reads To Own a Dragon and sobs at the effects of an absentee dad on her soul.

And then, she stops reading for a time.

Because although all of these books contain part of her,

None of them can withhold her entirety.