Epilogue

What a way to spend the night, stuck here at the city dump on a mound of god knows what. The filthy green trucks are gone now, and the smell isn't as bad as it was earlier—I must be getting used to it.

I landed close to the top and have a clear view of the river. Beneath the full moon, its water shimmers like a path to liberation. It gives me a hopeful feeling.

Before they carted me off, I was asleep on a warm shelf, dreaming of those who have read me. The woman who had found solace in my pages; the man who had discovered something new about himself—forget it, it doesn't matter anymore. I am no longer important to anyone. Thrown out with the trash to suffer in the middle of nowhere.

It is a good thing you can't see me now. My binding is broken, my pages damp and torn—damn wind!—and I know things are not going to get any better. I may be an old book with time trapped between my covers, but that does not mean I lack a sense of the future.

Those trucks will come back up here tomorrow and empty their insides over me. Each day I will find myself buried a little deeper. The moonlit river will vanish, and all my printed words will follow.