Come with me

To a magical place

A portal back in time

Where the floors creak

And the air is fragrant

With well read pages and worn leather

Four floors stacked floor to ceiling more books than could be explored

Roam the aisles

With no computer guides

Searching for the perfect book

How about old history books

About countries forgotten?

Antiquated medical guides?

Propaganda from wars fought long ago?

Or perhaps you prefer something a bit more recent?

Whatever the case may be

They have the perfect book for you

But if you decide

To go and explore

Be careful

Because it is oh too easy to get lost in these halls

As you transcend back in time

I am chained to a stainless steel IV pole, staring out the window. A gauntlet lies between me and freedom, spines requiring puncture, white blood cells needing a count, catheters wanting a flush. My hair floats to the ground as I dream of horses. The forest below becomes trunks and limbs made of books as I look down from the hospital window atop Marquam Hill.

Every needle pushes me closer to the edge of liberation, each stab, a promise for the future. I greedily count the dollars as hypodermics slide in and out of my vertebrae, my hands, my chest. One poke, one dollar. One dollar, one step into eternal bliss. All I have to do is bide my time.

Once a week I am released into the world for a few hours. The IV gets disconnected, the shoes put on and the road stretches before me. My mother and I descend on a serpentine road, winding around the hill until we arrive in the heart of the forest.

Powell’s Bookstore rises as an oasis in the midst of Endless Same. It soothes this purgatory of fire and fear, chemo and cancer, with imagination.

The horses are waiting for me between page after page of the Saddle Club book series. I walk the aisle to a room looking out on Burnside with more reverence than I do in church. The bookcases slant ever so slightly inwards as they scale the walls and I press my back against their warm memories. Piles of wood rise around me as I open each cover to check the pencil written price on the first page.

This process requires a strategic approach. If I have x shot dollars in my account and need five books to get me through the remaining hospital days, each book has to average a particular price. Math is magic, transforming commerce and suffering into emancipation.

Powell’s is a portal that fuels life. But if I must die, I want the scent of time-soaked trees to perfume my final breaths. Even when I return to The Hill and am re-inserted with drugs and poison to keep me alive, I am comforted by the rough pulp beneath my hands. The books press against my lap and keep me on the earth where I sleep and dream and heal.

The fresh scent of new books flooded over my body. The sight of a million books made my eyes pop open and my mouth drop open. I walk over to a book shelf and my hands are like magnets attracting to the books. I had no idea what book my senses would lead me to but I knew that book would be special. The thoughts of making the wrong choice went through my mind, but then ukulele realized there was no wrong choice and my senses wouldn't lead me to the wrong book. I picked up a book. It read counting by sevens. A little tingle titled in my hands and a little spark created in my heart. I knew this was the book and it was the book. I left that Barnes and nobles with a strong feeling in me.

I could still remember the first time I went into a ramshackle, second hand book store in District Tan Binh, where bricks protruded beneath poorly cemented walls. My brother was trailing behind me and crying, since our mother had left us alone to work in the restaurant nearby. It was my family's first arrival at a new neighborhood; mother was worried to leave us alone by ourselves. Thus, with two children in baggy pants and ashy clothes, she implored the benevolent bookstore's shopkeeper to let us stay for a few hours until she completed her shift. I tried to console myself, that everything was alright, although the heart of a fourteen year old girl was far from iron and steel to face reality. My brother, frightened and naïve, began to wail loudly for mother, attracting vexing look from strangers. When one lady began to walk towards the storeowner to complain, I immediately dragged him to a quiet, deserted corner, in fear we might be kick out for disrupting the public. Blood flushed my cheeks crimson, as I tried to placate him with sweet promises that mother would be back by a few minutes, but brother remained recalcitrant and continued wailing. Distressed, and unsure of what to do, I reached for a book upon the upper top of the shelf, titled Grimm's fairy tale.

"You want to learn to read?" I asked him. He did not respond, but as his eyes shifted towards the beautiful illustration of a fairy, glittering in faded gold, and the fancy letters written in black and blue, he nodded timidly. Taken that as a sign of confirmation, I set him down quietly, then began tracing each letter, slowly, a, b, c, as he repeated after me.

The ramshackle bookstore received little visitors. The wealthy preferred golfing, or going to the swimming pool, but for us poor Vietnamese from district Tan Binh, we stuck together in our little apartment, near the rundown bookstore. Mother was pleased to see me keeping my brother well, but I attribute the achievement to the power of the words. Minutes by minutes, days by days, we began running our fingers through Dickens, through Dr. Seuss, through Roald Dahl, through Silverstein, through countless hieroglyphs, through mountain of the Alps, through foreign places and fantasy kingdoms, through monsters and demons, angels and elves. Sometimes, after school, I would pass by the bookstore just to have a few moments of absolute solitude. It was so easy to detach myself from the tedious reality, from the sounds of traffic, from the smoke in the sky through glancing at the pearly white pages. Just for a few seconds, I could reach unreachable places and imagine unimaginable beings.

Somehow we managed to move to a more affluent place, then settled in America with the help of our relatives. I still keep the ramshackle bookstore in my heart, its torn carpets bearing the imprint of my shoes and the shadow of my coming legs. I promised myself to revisit there when I could. But when I could and when I did, the whole neighborhood had already renovated. Towering buildings seared through the skyline. Roads and bricks and gray dusts covered what once was trees and grass. I turned to one of my neighbors, and asked for that ramshackle bookstore.

"They replace it with a new shopping mall nearby. Make tons of profits, they say" he laughed good-humoredly, and bade me farewell as he joined the stream of the mass.

He did not see me biting my lips and flicking my head towards the darkening sky. He did not see the swallowing of my throat and the shaking of my body as a I marched into the sickening folding of the horizon. The name of the bookstore was Sanctuary.