By Cheryl Trykv
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
Back at the register I light a cigarette. I sort through stacks of books and books on books. There are books in the sink and boxes of books and books in the corner mating. The unshelved books are of such great number I am able to construct an igloo of sorts in which, if need be, I may nap. In the meantime, I sift through and pore over pages, I fan them and flip them, letting the sweet breath of usage soothe me. Units of meaning, reasons why.
When I was a little girl I tried to list everything I knew. Of course I was seven and didn’t know what I knew, so instead I drafted a second treatment of what I felt. Critics, my mother, called it nasty and horrifying and sent me back to my table for a rewrite. Later that afternoon I recognized that my favorite word was word. Word. It was what it said it was and could be without dispute. Page after page I filled the page with the word word until ‘long about dinner time my mother, mock-quizzical, peeped her head into my room. “How’s the autobiography?” she said. “You know I’m going to check that later for lies.” I laughed and told her to go ahead. That night I thought more about the word word and it seemed to me I had become the word and it frightened me and I couldn’t go to sleep.
“I don’t think so.”
“You’ve a great deal of loyalty to yourself, haven’t you?”
“Interesting.”
“Ghastly! Is that why you work at the bookstore now?”
