Page 44 - HEF Pen & Ink 2022

Of the seventeen-some-odd winters of my life, that one was the most beautiful and the one that returns to me most often, because it was then that I first fell in love. I was thir- teen and had just discovered the usefulness of my sister’s empty bedroom. Sitting across the hall from mine, my sister’s departure years before had left it in perpetual darkness, the door blocking the outside world, preserving the lingering strands of her presence and awaiting her return. I would pass by the door- way over a hundred times every day and each time I would pause to look at it, at the peeling white paint, at the dust slowly gathering in the curves of the door, at the wooden carvings shaped like two enormous eyes staring back into mine.
One day, my mother asked
me to retrieve a
book from the
depths of my
sister’s room and
so I stood outside
the door, bracing
my shoulders be-
fore turning the
cool metal knob
and stepping
inside. I was im-
mediately struck
by the size of the room; it was much smaller than I remembered, the bed I used to sneak into on nights when I couldn’t sleep was almost miniscule, lying compressed between the desk and the bookshelf. Quickly, I entered, retrieved the book I had been looking for, and left the room, feeling somewhat giddy from finally
crossing the threshold and the realization that the empty room was no longer as daunting as it once had been.
After that quickly began a ritual of sorts. Whenever I got bored, or whenever I felt the impulse, I would poke my head from my room into the hallway and peer around me to see if anyone was watching. Upon confirming I was alone, I would quickly creep into my sister’s room, barely letting my feet touch the floor until I was closed in, locking myself away from the outside world, escaping the mundane ordinary tasks of my life and allowing myself to explore the hidden treasures found so easily in her room.
While I diverted myself by inspecting different parts of her room, I would always
return to the one
I considered the most import- ant--her bookshelf. My whole life I had felt so starved for words that I searched for them everywhere, devour- ing every letter I possibly could, and her bookshelf was no different; its vast size enchant-
ed me and I would sit in front of it, scanning every book title, moving across the shelf one by one and examining each spine, determining if it was a worthwhile or interesting read, until one day I found a book different from the rest. One day I found a book of poetry.
I had never read poetry before. Yet, Power of Books By Katya Shkurigin
Keats in my Sister’s Room By Anna Ries-Roncalli
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