My Collection of Words

"I'd like to share something with you."

I lifted my head from the sand, shifting so that I could see her face, alight in the glow of the silver moon. Icy, pock-marked, chalky with the sleep dust of the stars, its platinum sheen drizzled down her smokey, auburn strands which floated angelically in the salt-stained breeze, coagulating and coalescing at her bangs before dripping onto the vermillion sand. Beyond her, the ocean whispered quietly under the velvet sky.

I stared in silent wonder as she reached into the pocket of her dress and retrieved a small, leather book, black as the space between the stars, its surface crumpled with age, use, and love. She caressed the book almost reverently, her fingers dragging across the worn cover, playing with the divots and rivulets that cross-crossed its face.

"This," she began quietly, "is my Collection of Words."

"It lives in my pocket and goes with me everywhere I go. All the places I've been, all the people I've met, all the minute beauties and fleeting perfections I've seen, this book has seen too."

"In its pages, I collect words. Every time I hear a quote that makes my soul sigh, I write it down so that no matter where I go, I can keep those words close to my heart, close to my soul. In these pages," she repeated with conviction, "I keep the wisdom of a thousand people."

"There is great pleasure in keeping such beauty in your pocket, always there for you when you need it, to peek at whenever, hidden in the privacy of its small pages even in the most public places. Isn't it marvelous how something so small can protect such wonder?"

I nodded, smiling as I stared into the intensity of her jade irises.

"What's your favorite quote?"

"That's an impossible question," she responded with a breezy smile that traveled from cheek to cheek, tracing across her lips, and curling up towards her eyes.

"I love them all. Right now, I particularly like this one: 'What's the point of walking of the rain if you're going to use an umbrella?'"

I laughed softly and she smiled knowingly.

"Beautiful."

"That may be the one that is floating on the surface of my mind at the moment, but by tomorrow that will change, as suddenly and fluidly as the seasons."

"I don't know what I will do with my life, where I will go, or who I will be, but I do know that for the rest of my life, I will continue to collect words. Until the day I die, my soul will overflow with the passion of the world so that when I leave, I know that I will have existed in the most visceral sense of the word, holding within my arms the most delicate and beautiful pieces of humanity."

"I want to live deliberately," she said, referencing the famous words of Thoreau. "'To front only the essential facts of life, and see if I cannot learn what it has to teach, and not, when I come to die, discover that I have not lived at all.'"