by P. Cooley

Created on: January 22, 2007   Last Updated: March 02, 2010

It was her favorite bench. It had been ever since she started taking these late afternoon strolls. It was winter, and very obviously so. She lived where seasons were very much what artists always portrayed in their paintings. The leaves were dead, yet beautiful ever still. The grass and trees were covered in a gossamer shroud of frost, from the previous night's snow. The young woman's ebony hair danced in the chilly wind, periodically covering the two beady icy-blue eyes here and there. She didn't seem to mind.

She was young, early twenties, and disenchanted with what she came to call her "life". She had been ever since she lived in those cozy California suburbs, and remained still even after she left. She always felt that city life would be better, more alive, or at least breathing. Once she did move into that tiny little apartment above the quaint little antique clock shop, nothing really seemed to change, as much as it seemed to shift with new scenery and faces but no real concrete change.

She seemed mildly content, sitting there on that bench. It was a nice change from her drab apartment, which was still awaiting the new carpet she purchased. She remembered looking at the plethora of designs in that carpet shop for hours, painstakingly looking over ever detail as if this new carpet would replace the very air she breathed, becoming her sustenance. That was over a month ago. She had almost completely forgotten about it until now. That's why she loved the bench so much; it's ability to make everything seem that much less important.It had become habit of hers to bring a book along with her on the strolls. It was as if the fantastic, and seemingly perfect lives of the characters in the books she so randomly purchased could actually manifest themselves in her life, quelling all her troubles. She wasn't the reading type though, much more of an introverted thinker; an observer. She didn't trust other's opinions, for she barely trusted her own. She was one that lived through her own experiences. She just liked the tangible book itself, it's aesthetic qualities: the smooth cover with it uniform font and beautiful illustrations. She liked the way it felt to hold a book; it was the opening and actual delving into the world of another person's mind that she hated.

Besides being in a constant state of "moving in" over the 3 months she had lived in the city, her life hadn't consisted of much. She worked at a small new and used book store a few blocks from her house. It

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