💛 The Bookkeeper 💛
Summertime dwindled, and memories softened and slipped under our pillows. Childhood squeals that once sweetened the beaches grew quiet when the wind came, and the school bells chimed everyone back from freedom to focus. By the time the leaves turned dull, everyone had forgotten all about the sunburns and the salted surf, the sunset drives with the windows rolled down, the greasy, glowings lips from the three-dollar french-fries, and the popsickle-stained tongues that couldn’t stop singing. With enough time, everyone forgot all about summer, except for L.
L held these memories a bit longer than everyone else, cupped them into her palms with care – she gathered them like strewn seashells and tucked them into the tote bags of her daydreams. She admired these memories every day – on the subway, on the walk to class, on the way to see the man she loved with all her might. Nostalgia kept her warm and glowy – she wrapped summer around her shoulders and tangled it into her curls long after time had waned into winter.
She served, in this way, as a home for forgotten moments, a collector of the tiny split-ends of time that didn’t make it to lasting memory. L looked after, and loved, these little moments, adopting the ones abandoned by others as her own. She was like a happy bookkeeper who shelved away story after story with a peculiar, repeated joy rather than a common monotony. She documented, with that serene, bookkeeper’s devotion, the ordinary days of her extraordinary friends. The ramen they microwaved in dimly-lit dorm rooms; the dumplings they folded & fried in a small silver pot, the amateur paintings they attempted and proudly stuck to their walls with cheap masking tape; the long, normal drives they took at abnormal hours; the laughter, the failure, the adventure – the mediocre. The spectacular.
L’s letters were her wealth: when the night grew cold and everyone was worlds away, she could reread and remember, and sunshine would fall on her again. This was the only gold she craved. Her windows were cracked, her clothes were borrowed, her sink crawled with bugs, but the heavens looked fondly down on her, this earthly girl who bound together the spines of time with her bare hands. No one had asked her to be this kind. And yet. How she loved! How she loved was how she lived – simply, deliberately, slowly – in the summer sun.
In grey New York, L lived like a firefly – a tiny speck of unnoticeable light, flickering from night to dreary night. Her essence was at odds with the ruthless, double-edged city, the sky-scraping sword that would cut you if you weren’t careful. The blinding, artificial light. Everyone in New York squeezed and squandered as much as they could from the city, before it did it to them. They wanted the red lipstick, the red carpet, the red-bottomed heels to run away from reality with. L didn’t want any of that. At times, she wasn’t quite sure what she wanted – but somehow, the affliction of ambition, the madness for millionaire status that kept everyone else in the city so cruel, clipped, and hustling, never swayed her. She kept to herself, finding her way, wearily, wingbeat after wingbeat, to a sense of softness.
To be continued…
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What a beautiful introduction to the life of L! Reading this makes me fill with the warm glow of nostalgia, makes memories feel more like gifts than the objects of heavy hearts. To think of memories as “tiny split-ends of time” is a gift itself. I can’t wait to read more 🙂
Ty bestie 🕊️✨