Dust

I think that there is something very sad about an empty bookshelf.

The journey of a mind's life can be traced through the spines of books.

The well cracked spine of old favourites. The nearly new but now dusty installments of an adolescent phase. A fat doorstep of a classic with the faded post-it note still stuck on page 20. Forgotten fancies and simple time-fillers sat alongside memorised poems and passages, and margins filled with a hunger to understand.

Now the shelf stands exposed, an inch of thick dust at the back. And an old stray sock.