The Cities Between Pages

three cities, three spines—quiet lights beneath the skin,guiding me through dusk

—

In Ljubljana, I first learned how quiet can hurt.
A city just big enough to disappear in,
just small enough to feel watched.
It was the winter of my seventeenth year.
Snow fell too softly to cover anything real.

That’s when I read “Norwegian Wood.”
A book that didn’t offer answers,
but made me feel okay about not asking the right questions.
I remember finishing it in my cramped room in Šiška,
wrapped in two blankets,
sirens sliding by on the icy street below.
It made loneliness sound like jazz—
melancholic, yes,
but honest.

I needed that honesty.
The world had started lying to me:
“Just be normal.”
“Just want what everyone wants.”
But the pages whispered,
“It’s okay to be silent inside.”
And I believed them.

—

A year later, in Regensburg,
the sun wouldn’t leave me alone.
It was too bright, too warm,
too full of things I didn’t yet believe I deserved.

I spent afternoons by the river,
feet in the water, head in “Letters to a Young Poet.”
Rilke taught me that solitude wasn’t punishment.
It was preparation.
To become.
To create.
To wait for love that doesn’t ask you to shrink.

He wrote:
“Live the questions now.”
And I did.
With sticky fingers from too many Bavarian pretzels,
and a cheap notebook filled with half-truths I was still trying to grow into.

—

By the time I got to London,
everything was loud again.
My flat in Birmingham was damp and too expensive.
Toast bred ants overnight.
My laptop was stolen.
I remember standing in Euston Station
with one bag, no plan, and the quiet dread of being behind in life.

That’s when I read “Meditations” by Marcus Aurelius.
Yes, the Roman emperor.
Strange companion in a cold British winter.

But he didn’t tell me what to do.
He reminded me:
You can suffer with grace.
You can observe your chaos, name it, and not become it.
You can wake up in a moldy student dorm
and still choose your next thought.

It wasn’t stoicism as an armor.
It was stoicism as a soft, quiet lantern.

—

Three Books That Changed Me:

1. “Norwegian Wood” – Haruki Murakami
   For teaching me that it’s okay to feel too much.
2. “Letters to a Young Poet” – Rainer Maria Rilke
   For giving me permission to not know who I was yet.
3. “Meditations” – Marcus Aurelius
   For helping me sit still inside the storm.

—

Books don’t fix you.
They echo back the shape of your questions.
They become cities you walk in when your own feels too sharp.
They give you language for your silence.

And sometimes—if you’re lucky—
they find you in just the right year,
on just the right bench,
under a sky that doesn’t need you to explain yourself.

So if you’re lost,
find the book that feels like a whisper.
Let it sit with you.
Let it mirror the part you’ve been trying to forget.

And then—
step forward,
one paragraph at a time.