Single Pink Wavy Line At The Top

There was a small shop on the boulevard where we used to walk when I was young. Outside in the evening, the sidewalks there were lit with glowing neon. Inside the shop, the light was white, and there was a smell in the air that I cannot describe, that I can only barely remember and would love to breathe freely again so to relive my faded memories of the place.

It was a paper shop. Stacks of various shapes and sizes were ordered on the shelves from floor to ceiling. I remember standing intoxicated, my head back in awe trying to take it all in, trying to imagine having even a small stack of paper like that: pale blue lines with a single pink wavy line at the top.

There are several shelves in my garage today where I keep many variously sized paper stacks. There is a shelf behind a chair in the living room where I keep a couple more. And there are two drawers beside me now where I keep yet more.

It was a long time ago and half a world away from here, and the names and shapes of all those places have radically changed, but I am certain that much of the credit for these modest piles of mine goes to the man in that small shop off that neon-lit boulevard. I am certain my stacks are but efforts to relive the intoxication, to recall the smell, to remember all those pale blue lines with the single pink wavy line at the top.

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