Bookstore Love Story

A Love Letter to Bookstores and an Original Poem

Photo by Jason Leung on Unsplash

Dear Bookstores, 

I'm just going to say it: I love you. I know that's forward, but it's the truth, and I want to be honest. I love you for who you are inside. I don't care if you're a tiny used bookstore with piles all over the place that will surely fall over at any moment and injure someone's foot. I don't care if you're a big indie store with witty tote bags as far as the eye can see. You may specialize in mysteries, cookbooks, or plays, and I promise to love each version of who you are and who you will become. 

Remember the fun times we had when I was a kid? I'd visit you at the mall in Overland Park, Kansas. I'd head straight for the kids' section to find Ann M. Martin, the scribe responsible for the Babysitters Club series. Having read most of those, I moved on to California Diaries, a spin-off series that seemed so cool and gritty. These epistolary novels inspired me to write, and you brought them into my life. I can't thank you enough for that. 

I was all about Maggie, who lived in Hollywood.

When I got a little older, I found myself embraced by the big, cushiony chairs of Barnes and Noble. The scent of Starbucks coffee was in the air as I wandered the fiction section, searching for anything with the Oprah's Book Club seal. Those books were real literature in my eyes, and I, a teenager, needed precisely that. You probably don't remember this, but one day you had a copy of Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke in your clearance section. I bought it, but I couldn't get into it. I read it a few years later, in my 20s, and it quickly became one of my all-time favorite books. You knew what I needed before I did.

Andrea + Rilke = Love 4Ever

When I moved from Kansas to Washington, I kept hearing about a bookstore called Powell's that was a few hours away in Oregon. I finally got to visit in 2012 and tried not to cry when I walked in. Books were everywhere. New books, old books, used books, favorite authors, and titles I'd never heard of were spread out before me like a feast. I walked around the blue room in a daze, in awe of all the options. I had to return the next day, and you knew I would, didn't you? I can be predictable sometimes, but you always surprise me. 

Me in Powell’s for the first time. My friend Ann was very patient.

Thanks for being there throughout my life, Bookstores. Thank you for being a place of calm and order. When I tell you I'm on yet another book-buying ban, thank you for gently patting my hand and saying, "Sure, honey." Thanks for not judging me for outgrowing the bookshelves I have at home and for buying another tote bag I don't need, not even a little bit. I might need it someday, and it's good to be prepared. I'm sure you have a book about that in the nonfiction section.

I hope you feel loved, Bookstores, because you are. Thank you for being right by the ocean in Seaside, having a cute cat, and selling me Steinbeck's Travels with Charley, which I read on the beach. Thank you for being a hole-in-the-wall in Fort Scott, Kansas, and having several Raymond Carver paperbacks for $3 apiece. Thank you for being in downtown Spokane and having great staff recommendations. I don't know what candles have to do with books but thank you for stocking them because they smell so lovely. You're always looking out for me, Bookstores. 

I’ll do my best to look out for you.

Love always, 

Andrea

Was I overdressed for the beach, or was everyone else underdressed? We’ll never know.

And now, here’s an original poem called “Bookstore Love Story.”

When I feel your absence most, I wander
the aisles of your favorite used bookstore. 
My fingers skim the shelves, and some sections
you browsed leave them dustier than others. 
I flip through copies of Moby-Dick and Cannery Row,
to see if anyone left notes in the margins,
thoughts that might match yours. 
I long to see your scribbles next to Melville’s prose,
to see you crookedly underline Steinbeck’s lengthy
descriptions. I always pick up On the Road 
and read the part where Kerouac mentions
the too-huge world that vaults us toward goodbye.
That word lingers in my head and makes its way
inside my chest, making my heart feel far too heavy 
for its years. So instead of goodbye, I imagine:
There you are in Paris with Hemingway and Fitzgerald. 
I see sweat on your brow as you sit in the South 
with O’Connor. I hear you laugh with Dorothy Parker, 
watch you eat a peach with Prufrock, and envision 
your eyes rolling every time Holden speaks. 
I find you in phrases, on the shelves,
hidden somewhere in the back,
in the black and white of ink on paper. 
They have their stories, but we still have ours, too.

Do you have a favorite bookstore? Have you ever written a love letter to it and posted it on the internet? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Consider sharing this post with any bookstore lovers you know.