The trolley wheels creak along as I bring in another batch and scan the room for shelf space. I know the bookcases will have grown new alcoves and recesses connected to the old by some mysterious yet intoxicating logic. Yesterday you had a warped stained-glass-like pattern of armfuls of books crammed into crooked rectangles and unto each other, and you thought that’s enough, I can finally start actually reading. But today you have new nooks and crannies waiting to be filled. That is the way of the library.
A crisp breeze blows a softened tear-away page on my face. I pick it up and scan it. Dan Brown. I shove it into my mouth and begin filing.
The library has needs and I oblige because I’m happy living in it. I subsist on pulp and at night cover myself with encyclopedias. Out there are wild books in flocks and schools and prides, but I take shelter in the library, not quite forest, not quite cavern. It grows as I feed it with the things I kill. We are good for each other.
The bigger the library gets, the more labyrinthine, the better for me. If I were to crawl into the back aisles, who knows what I would find? All the memories and regrets could have taken a book-life of their own, grown a whole ecosystem to encircle my realm. Sometimes, in the dead of night, by the warmth of my campfire, I can hear rustles.
the Budafoki amended 