Book of Life

I stand in the anguish of ripped nature where fallen trees are a defeat between it and materialism. Born from a woodchurner who pulps and pushes me out, ready for the midwife, who cuts me from the root and binds me tightly in natural fibres. Then, I am placed on the bosom of my writers heart. There is no turning back now. I am but the soul of something to be written.

The cover so soft like baby’s skin, each page crisp and white, untouched by evil. Slowly my stories emerge as the white is taken up with different colours. I speak volumes only too be misunderstood. Guided by a hand that nurtures my whim. I sense her passion and strength in every word softly spoken against my innocence. She passes me to another who writes wisdom into my heart. Together they fill my pages with stories from their time. A romantic tale of hippy love and seventies action packed anarchy with eighties comedic hairstyle woes. With different genres moulding my world. Lectures on ‘how to’ and recipes for living; love drives their emotions which spill onto my pages.

Day by day like a diary I am written. The feeling of unanswered questions and the interpretations of their lives push curiosity to the front of my mind. Now sins become a part of the core, growing to manifest into an illustration of dark colours. 

“Why can’t you tell me how it will end, good or bad?”.

“No-one reads a book when the ending is first; the element of surprise is what keeps us going”. She answers my question leaving me more confused.  

I turn to rebellion as the years pass. Alas, I am carried to a new owner, one who can read what my essence is about. What was written before has come around again. This time the story I tell is understood. The story I read is understood. So the plot thickens and happiness and romance is merged with a new life and a new shelf. Drifting from mark to mark, I am now placed in a different culture. I absorb words that are not understood.  Making them my own by conflict and conduct. We are together, dear author of mine. Ink setting in my pores and leaving a mark that tells of true love and desire. I feel not alone in this lonely new world.

As the years pass, my cover slightly withers. Pages, with corners turned down to show landmarks of birth and death, joy and grief. Tell tale signs of tears fallen, dried and forgotten. The smell of food and love and hatred, all infused within each page. Like a super smell of spice, roses, blood and sweat. The fallen leaves in autumn, turning brown then red then yellow, so do my leaves. As I change from neutral to wrath to mellow as money does not grow on trees. Still I am tightly bound.

I am no longer the hungry caterpillar, munching letter after letter. I have emerged a butterfly, pages like wings, fluttering in the wind. The joyous day arrives, a page is torn. Drifting through whispers to a destiny of their own; to be recycled into a new story.

Further pages tear away and sprout their own leaves. Until one day I lie in my writer’s hands. Feeling their last breath, softly brushing against the words. Then there is silence. No more ink graces my pages as the dirt where my roots once stood swallows the hand that held my heart. Now my journey has stagnated, full stopped in life without any muse. I refuse to be read and refuse to be heard. I return to the shelf with only a memoir of this life.

Years rush by and my cover is tatty and torn. I am left but a withered carcass of missing pages. Full of guilt, rot and drama. Desperate to remember the words which have smudged, leaving unrecognisable images. Some fallen to family discourse and despair, it is all I have now. I can not see the beauty around, I am not willing to try. I recall the contents and glossary, and fall to the pages that are left. I stand on the shelf waiting to be read, with only a glimpse of the past.

The years whither on and finally, I return to the place I was born. Remembering the stories when they were first told. The adventures, the romances, laughter and tears. Looking at the machines that used to pulsate, now echo my name. They beg me to come. So I follow; I am swallowed whole, cover, binding, pages all gone. My heart is still there, mangled and twisted, yet still beating. I emerge not as me but as something new. To be re-written.