Twenty-One Hours Alone

For my birthday, I wanted solitude.

My birthday was on Friday and I received my gift several weeks ago. I told my husband that I wanted a new bookshelf. When we moved into this house six years ago, he said “That’s it — no more bookshelves.” Meaning that I needed to make do with what I had, also implying that I would need to make decisions about what books to keep when new books come in.