Book Match

Back when I smoked, as the son of a writer & a librarian, the book match was like a brother to me. Once torn from the book it couldn’t go back, while smoking made me an exile from the air.

We both had a tendency to lose our heads. I was skinny as a heron’s leg; a book match isn’t even thick enough to qualify as a match stick.

It’s a minimal page with just enough room for one word beginning with a lower-case L

& ending with incandescence— a holy word, a profane word, a word for (forgive me) a kind of match. It’s so worn out from overuse I hesitate now to let it pass my lips.