I’d actually intended to include this book with the previous charity bookbin book, but once I realized the nature of the aforementioned book’s subject matter, I figured a split might be in order. While the other one is a romp, this little discovery is… sad. First off, it’s a poetry book (no, that’s not the sad part). It’s called Halfway to Silence and is by May Sarton. Generally, I don’t pick up or get poetry books. Why? I spent most of my poetry-reading-brain-currency in high school and college. I’ve got loads of poetry books stacked within my book stacks and piled within my bookshelves. There’s enough poetry laying around the apartment to have a guest assume that I might avidly read poetry. But I not. Instead, when I read poetry, it’s the equivalent of a random drop of a quarter into one of the toy machines outside a grocery store. Momentarily exciting, entirely impulsive, and the interest fades just as quickly.

But, I’ll be honest. I do like poetry. I can even recite poems by memory.

Anyway. In all my travails through the poetic realm that is majoring in English lit, I never came across May Sarton. Nor did I care. But the title interested me enough for me to pick up the very short volume and page through it. Actually, I didn’t make it through any pages. Only a page.

Because on the title page right after the cover, I found his hand-written note:

It seems I keep giving you Sarton, but she has so much to say! You must re-read this after you read the journals. Her poetry seems a bit different, then. You may have gathered I’ve read this already.

I love you.

Merry Christmas—

Martina

Even then, I still wasn’t sure about putting it in my cart. Then I realized how sad this find was. I mean, this touching little inscription in a book of poetry, and I found it in a charity bookbin at the grocery store!. Now it wasn’t just any book of poetry, it was a tragic tale of love and woe (albeit one almost entirely in my imagination), and into my cart it went.

I know, I know. “S-U-C-K-E-R” is written on my forehead.

Categories: distracted