Robin Ducharme

Author | Broadcaster | Journalist | Reporter

My Affair

Today 
Is the first day of my affair.
I’m a married woman.
October afternoon as warm as June.
Dutifully met my husband for lunch-Per his request.
Discussed kids, college applications and such.
Intended to go straight home.
But heaven’s such a short walk from here.
So I walk. Leave my car alone in the lot. Guilty as sin.
Our kids will be home from school soon.
They’ll be fine, I tell myself.
I inhale: will this door be locked?
Ah. The front door is open.
Exhale. Relieved. Glide through the vestibule.
Past the guest bath.
To the library.
Sit in the most comfortable chair I’ve ever known.
The room is cool. Calm.
Unlike me.
My heart races.
Considering my choices.
Slowly I choose – 
The Therapist.
Smitten by Paris’ dedication:
“Happiness is like a butterfly, the more you chase it, the more it will evade you.”
(Who knew Henry David Thoreau wrote that, not Lana Del Rey?).
Excited, and guilty, I skim Therapist right then and there!
On this very chair!
All of it! In one furtive afternoon!
As the words of fellow authors
Whisper above me –
Carved in the ceiling’s wood:
“I Have Always Imagined That Paradise Will Be A Kind of Library.”
(J.L. Borges).
And of course, the same words framed in our living room at “home:”
“Come, Take Choice Of All My Library. And So Beguile My Sorrow.”
(Billy Shakespeare).
Close The Therapist.
Satisfied like I haven’t felt in forever.
Stand up.
Stretch.
Adjust my jeans, tuck in my shirt.
Tidy up.
Tiptoe out the door.
Promise to return 
As soon as I can.
Today was so good.
I feel renewed;
Guilty, yes: many things I should have done on this lazy, 
Thursday afternoon – 
Instead of 
Quietly –
Very much enjoying –
The seductive, sleek books
And author ghosts 
In a library
Called Perrot.

by Robin DuCharme Pastore
Old Greenwich, CT
October 21, 2021

Robin Joan

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