Our Lady of Perpetual Astonishment

I’m reading that McCarthy book my brother gave me dog-eared. We thought he might not finish it before my most recent departure, but he pulled it off. He was hesitant to say he’d loved it, but wasn’t unimpressed. It’s McCarthy after all, we agree. Weeks later now I notice a blank page missing from the back that wasn’t blank by the time my brother ripped it. A small ink mark, perhaps a scribbled “s”, left behind in the rending. I once tore a book from its binding, as my mother sighed, to take the half I liked along with me. Now I carry this heavy, 380 page hard-cover as affectionately as I once did the toy elephant my brother carried as a baby and gave me at graduation. The one I lost in a fire a decade later, the way I had long since lost him to a fathomless love, consumed by flame when we were still kids. As with so many small moments, I cling to this now: a book that reveals a shared trait between we two. I love that we both eschew biblio-sanctity in favor of the words themselves. I gather this new fact carefully about me, protective. Shoring up sibling-hood, feeding a humble hearth fire still smoldering.