beat the devil.

i fell in love last summer.

with a book.

i'd purchased it secondhand at 7th ave books, a paperback reviewer's copy, rife with illegible scrawlings and dog-eared pages, and i read it voraciously, joyously. it was unquestionably my favorite tome of that long, hot season.

but, as i tend to do with such volumes, i lent it out. and, as is always the danger, since then i haven't really seen much of the lendee. as in, any of. so, given that i consider it to be in incredibly poor taste to call simply to retrieve a book, i've chalked it up as a casualty of book exchanging and hope that he is enjoying it as much as i did.

but this is not a wistful lament over the loss of a much loved tome. rather, it is a happy notation of the fact that the book has drifted back in to my life, thanks to an incredibly thoughtful Boy, who found a signed first edition and figured the time had come to fill that particular hole in my bookshelf.

 and, if we were to be melodramatic, my heart.