Fall back

This morning, reading Proust before dawn, I suddenly saw myself as the child I was, just home from the library with even more books, one open in my lap, my head bowed to the sound of the clock and the rattle in the kitchen of my mother’s pans — and at that moment there arose, from the page itself or from somewhere else, the scent of smoke, familiar yet impossible to identify. Within myself or without, a sentence or paragraph down, fingers to text and palm, adrift to rest in this room, but not — no, never, alone.


Update:
In the Forum: trouble in Mudville.