Friday night, and I finally bought the anthology I have been borrowing from the library in pieces. The shop had a new one with a stiff spine, and a used one with a faded price inside the cover, almost half. I took the used one, because I have been practising the sentence “price is what you pay,” and because I like a book that already looks lived in.
What I did not budget for was the pencil.
Whole stanzas are underlined, some twice, as if importance could be made thicker. In the margin there is a tiny “theme??” and a star that looks drawn in a hurry, the way I draw stars when I am pretending I already understand. The previous owner was probably sitting an exam, or getting ready to sit one. Either way, they left a map on my pages.
In Business we talk about second-hand goods as if the only thing that transfers is the object. A used book should be the same poems, only softer at the edges. This one is not quite the same product. It comes with a stranger’s decisions about what counts. I keep catching my eyes following their lines before I have chosen my own, which is an efficient way to read and a lazy way to think.
I tried to ignore the marks. That is harder than it sounds. A line that is already dark looks more official than a line that is only ink from the printer. I found myself agreeing with a star I did not put there, and then I felt slightly cheated, as if I had paid for a quiet copy and been given a conversation I did not join.
The poems are still the poems. I know that. Value is supposed to be what I get, and I did get the same words for less money, which is the kind of bargain the part of me that wants to study finance is supposed to like. I just did not expect the discount to include someone else’s confidence.
I am reading with a blank card over the margin tonight, which looks a bit dramatic on the desk. Tomorrow I can decide whether to keep the pencil or treat it as noise. For now I want the cheaper book to be mine long enough that the stars start to look like weather, not instructions.