What happened this morning

It's the space to know. I can't tell you, so I'll tell you.

What happened this morning is a book. It doesn't tell you what happened in the morning, of course, nor certainly not this morning. It doesn't really tell you anything, unless you know how to read between the lines, unless you know how to add your own lines. It tells its story in empty pages, in wear and tear, in stains and creepish smell. The way old books always smell, of yellowing paper and oil and sweat, of pages turned and paused and pawed. Some of the pages are torn out, and these tell a story too - why here, in the middle, there, toward the end? Why is the entire ending removed outright?

It's part of a set.

The series

There's no particular name for the lot. Books of Dreams, they're sometimes called. Some don't even have names, and are marked by other things, or not at all. A figure of a tree. A particular binding. A pattern embossed into the cover. And then there are the others:

• A Stirring Deep Stillness
• The butler dimension
• The Tragedy of All This
• A Specification for Specification Specification: A Specification
• The Library

The funny thing is there are so many 'Libraries'. All capital 'L' and proper, titular 'The', as if to be definitive. And yet they're all different things. Sometimes they're different people. Sometime, sometimes... they're nothing at all.

I sent you to one, once. Perhaps I'll send you again, if she ever wakes up. If she ever remembers.

The pages

They're not blank. They're not truly empty. They contain no words, no drawings, perhaps not even any intentional marks, but in the unintentional you may find a depth of story, a breadth of emotion unexpressed in the simple narrative. There are no words, but there is nuance. There are no drawings, but there is texture, smell, memory. Breath. Still yourself and listen, and hear it. A soft sigh, a shiver in the pages. A heartbeat, so to speak. Something stirs within the spine, calls to reader, who is now listener. The feeling is deep, deeper than anything, and yet, perhaps, always there, simply not quite realised.

It never fades, after setting down the book. It stays with you. A familiarity, a nostalgia, a vague persistent murmur. Something has awakened. Something has become...

Some of the pages are missing. There are stains around them, for a few. Scratches in the binding. These were torn out, and you still see the ragged edges around the sewing, in the glue. A hasty job, no care taken. But these? These were cut. Precisely, close. Someone wanted them perfect, they wanted them unmarred, for whatever use or collection they intended. Understandable, really, though perhaps a bit disappointing. What isn't so understandable is the ending. Also cut, but this time jagged, at all wrong angles. Bits and triangles hanging from the binding, and some of the binding itself is slashed and gouged. Pages around are damaged, too. Is some of this blood? Pooled ink, as if around the words that just aren't there?

Why are the pages blank, but for this? Why, if this book has changed so many hands, has nobody written a thing in it?

The words

Everyone tests it. You would, if you had it now. Perhaps you have it now. Perhaps you test it, right now. Raise your pen, open a page. Think, to yourself, what shall you add? Something pithy. Something clever. Smart. Silly. Dumb. A meme. You need sleep.

Put pen to the page. Shape the words, make the marks, along down the line. Perhaps you half expected sometime to happen, the words to disappear entirely, or fade, or shift. The stains to swallow them whole. But whatever you write, it's right there. It's all right there.

The words never left.

They never left.

What did you add?

What does it mean?