I frequent second-hand bookstores at strange hours because I feel at home nestled amongst spines sedimented with crystallised thoughts I can lean on when mine feels wary, where each borrowed vertebra somehow allows me to decompress my own.

I have a little ritual where I will pull out an older book, one with pages stained with patience and fortitude, one bearing the faint residue of survival, one that carries an energy I instinctively trust. I close my eyes and turn to a page at random to receive what I should know in that moment - and what I have needed has always found me, perhaps because when I am searching inwardly, the external contextualisation becomes a perceptual shift, amplifying that which I am already attuned to, making it easier for me to see - a form of comforting convergence where I am met halfway.