Dust Binds

"I've read all these," Murray groaned. "But I can't remember a damn verse." He continued to make that noise of frustration, blowing air through taut lips, as I watched him pull one dusty book off after another. I'd had to step out of the room. My eyes had begun brimming with a rising tide and I'd been convulsed with a series of violent sneezes as one by one the coats of dust were blown from the covers and swirled beneath the faux-candle bulbs. Still, the man was too intriguing for me to remove myself completely, so I stood sentry in the hallway as he continued to rifle amongst the towering shelves.

"Ahh," he murmured. "This one here." He'd pulled a rather slender work from its brothers and began to thumb through the yellow pages. "I would spend hours poring over these words. I'd read with a death grip on my pen and swoop it down like a dagger if I thought there were some kind of pattern to be picked out from the chaos. Look," he demanded, stabbing at the pages with his stubby forefinger. "Look here how deep the groove is from the pen." He turned the pages over each other as he approached and I let my gaze meet the tiny rivulet. Indeed thereupon the page were the banks that had once held the fluid waters of imagination. The reverse side revealed a small mound in the streams place. A senseless design unless one were to mirror the pattern and arrive at the words, but he hadn't allowed me the time. He was pacing back towards the shelf, positioning himself under the light.

"How naive. I must've thought I'd stumbled upon the New World." He tilted his head back with the book aloft so that he could peer at it through his glasses. His mouth was slightly open, the edges moving almost in tandem with the spastic motion of his eyes. His finger slid across the indentions in the margins, his thoughts trrying to recapture themselves. "Think in terms of Nature. Damn. In terms of Nature...No wonder I don't remember any of this...I was an idiot! How'd I ever let myself..." He broke off, dropping the book to his side and craning his head back as if on a hinge. His lids clamped down and his jaw grew taut.

"Well, I'm sure if it was put into context." It was an awkward moment and I'd wanted to split the silence. Almost immediately the lids fluttered open. His turning to face me was slow and methodical. I begged him in my head to just get out with it. "No need to be dramatic," I thought. "Isn't that what he's gone and upset himself over anyways?"

I wanted to look at my feet but his focused movements held my gaze. He continued to blink behind those thick glasses, the reflection from the faux-candles aligned almost perfectly with his pupils so that I was meeting the gaze of a man with electric tongues of fire in his eyes. He tilted his head slightly to the side and crinkled his brow. "Have at it," I thought. "Just be done already."

"Pffff."