As both their companion and destination, the silhouette holds out her (or his?) book strolling with his (or her?) partner.
What book does the shadow read?
What world within its pages?
What hidden hopes and violent passions, secret crimes and breathtaking beauty, has the author written to make this pedestrian incapable of closing the cover, of diverting the eyes?
Is the figure’s face frowning or smiling, laughing with or crying for the characters?
Are their fingers following the lines as they read, their mouth murmuring the words?
Or is this anonymous reader reciting a paragraph to his companion; friend or lover?
It must be a good book, its reader a good reader, for who these days ambles by with a book in hand?
We all have one book as an eternal shadow: a novel that moved us, a childhood book that excited you, or a book to guide and inspire, even a book that we have not read at all – ancient books of wisdom and lore, unwritten memoirs held only in the hearts of their author – and books prohibited by law. There are some we read only when young or old, others we read freely or by compulsion, some we toss aside and others we will never forget.
This silhouette’s book?
A mystery, of course.
Lives and Times…
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