Near the floor,
on the lowest shelf,
the book waited.
It called to me
with the whisper of a song
that raised my skin.
I remembered only its rhythm:
slow,
insistent.
When I showed it to my mother
one afternoon at the library,
she tore it from my hands.
She said it would drive me mad.
Her eyes never left mine.
She forbade me to return.
At dinner,
my father preferred to talk about something else.
The book leaked into my dreams.
It insisted
with blinking green
and blue lights.
From between its pages
something thick slid free:
a translucent substance
that wrapped without touching,
smelling of jasmine,
aloe,
plaster.
On the last night
I saw my mother
burn it,
screaming at it
in a broken tongue.
The next day
I went to the library.
The book was still there,
in plain sight,
now and then accompanied
by the fine footsteps
of the librarian—
the only ones
that turned down that aisle.
I took it to the back,
near the restrooms.
When it sensed me close,
its pages fired small, hot drops.
They left my skin red,
in zigzags.
The pads of my fingers
began to pulse.
Something inside the book
tightened,
then loosened,
in a two-beat measure
pulling me inward.
There was slime.
Bite marks.
Traces.
Scars.
One page insisted
on being turned.
I touched it.
I remembered my mother
disconnecting the machine
on her back
when she got home.
The book began to sing.
From then on,
my mother and I
spoke the same language:
the broken one,
the one passed hand to hand,
unchanged
despite time and space.
Azul Rivera is a Peruvian author and professional violinist. Her work crosses literature and music, exploring the uncanny in everyday life.
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