Today I am Writing: On What Makes Us

I have never seen him smile.

The email comes through my inbox:
"The book you have requested is on hold."

I take my library card and leave my office, climb down the stairs and around the massive building just across the sidewalk, up and through the revolving door. I make my way to the desk, where he sits.

He is always polite. His grave eyes ask with his low voice how he can help me. He takes my card, runs it through his machine. He gets the information he needs, and stands.

I watch him walk to the back. There is pain in his body, but I do not think he knows. I think to myself, "I wonder what has made him?"

(Do I know what has even made me? The unpacking and the unraveling and the digging down to uncover the stones, the ones I have collected. Kept. I get closer, but the work leaves me hungering for the Needle in the only vein that's left.)

He helps me check out my books. He asks if I need a receipt? No, thank you though, I say. He asks if I need a bag? No, thank you, I am fine, I reply.

His body is all sigh, and I lift my chin a bit to signal my once-again gratitude. I take the books home.

I read:
Sometimes we wear masks
Not with deceptive intent
Not even to shield faces from the sun
But the within from the without
Or save the day from the gaze of yesterday
We wear masks
The better to dance the big masquerade of just living*

I think: We make ourselves, don't we?

(I look in my own face and ask: Will you accept what you have crafted with your own hands? Or is there more waiting beyond this place, for when you decide to release what you are holding?)

*Birth of a Dream Weaver: A Writer's Awakening, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, p. 39