The Tragedy of the Part-Time Bookshelf

I walked through the front door and my foot hit a book. It was face down in the hallway.

"What happened here?" I wondered aloud.

I closed the door back and saw several more books scattered in the entryway.

"Huh…"

I opened my army bag and Tadpole poked his head out.

"That shelf finally fail?" he asked.

I looked up. He was correct. There was a shelf that I used half the time as a railing and half the time as a bookshelf. It had finally pulled away from the wall. The white painted plank lay at the bottom of the steps. In the process of falling, it had also snapped.

I sighed. "That shelf had been there as long as the house."

"About time for it to come down then."

I gave Tadpole the side eye.

He lifted up his little paws to me.

I gave him my fingers and let him crawl up my arm.

He scrambled up to my shoulder and peered at the shelf. "Shall we throw it onto the fire?"

"You don't have a sentimental bone in your tiny body do you?"

"Sentimentality is for those who can afford it."

"Well, I can."

"Do you want to say a few words over it or something?"

I rolled my eyes. "Could you shut up?"

"Moment of silence then?"

"It will be, if you would just be quiet."

He sniffed and scratched at my sweater.

I considered the piece of wood again. I didn't think it was salvageable. And yet I wanted to save it.

"It will be cold tonight."

I glared at Tadpole now. "You can't just give me a second here?"

"I'm hungry! And you're staring at a piece of kindling!"

I walked into the library and pulled him off my shoulder. I set him down in his little house where his food bowl lived. I turned and put my army bag down on my desk. I pulled out the baggie with the porcelain pieces and laid them on the piece of black velvet I always had spread out on the surface.

Tadpole stared at his food dish. "It's empty."

"I am aware of that. I am not blind as Moth yet." I turned back to his house. I opened the food canister and filled his dish halfway. "Any other requests?"

"A meal from a five star chef?"

I walked back into the entryway. I knelt next to the bookshelf. I touched the wood where it had splintered and split. It had been so smooth and unchanging for my entire twenty five years that it was disturbing to see it now so deformed and twisted. It worried me. It was a break in reality.

I gathered the books that had spilled on the floor and stairs. I stacked them on the small table in the entryway. I picked up the wood. I folded it in half and heard it splinter further. A small piece boomeranged out and landed on a step. I looked up to the wall. There was a hole now where the shelf hung. The wallpaper was torn. It didn't make the place look much worse. But didn't make it look better either.

I walked into the library with the wood under my arm.

"Said your goodbyes?"

"This shelf was the last thing my grandfather added to this house before he declared it done," I replied sharply. "So I'll thank you to shut up about it for the rest of the evening."

I started the fire. I broke the piece down further. I fed it slowly as the fire began to eat the fuel. I heard a scampering. Then felt a tug on my pinky finger. I looked down.

Tadpole climbed up my hand and arm to curl into the hollow of my collarbone.

I pet his tiny body and fed the fire with the last bit of the shelf.