An Old Book, Revisited

I was looking for one line, something I half remembered from years ago, and I told myself I would just flip to it and close the book again.

Instead I sat down on the floor with my back against the shelf and read for an hour. The pages have gone soft and a little yellow at the edges, and there is a coffee ring on page forty that I do not remember making.

It is strange how a book can hold two versions of you at once. The person who first read it, and the one sitting there now, older, reading the same words and noticing completely different ones. I never did find the line I was looking for. I will probably go back for it tomorrow, and get just as distracted again.