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She was sitting by the light of a hanging bulb at a square table. From Where I stood at the door all the tiles on the floor seemed to converge upon her at the other side of the room. I stepped lightly, putting one foot in front of the other, always forward but never loudly, never loudly enough to break her trance or cut the moment like the grout that divided up the tiles. I peered over her shoulder. She was diligently cutting the covers off of hardcover books books that sat docile in a pile where her feet knocked with an incessent rhythm against the legs of her chair.
“Why are you cutting off their covers?”
“The words can’t breathe with these covers suffocating them” she said, depositing a cover onto the pile that read, “The Brothers Karamazov” in crimson stitching against a pale yellow. It was well worn around its edges.
