Little Bits of Paper by Martin Piñol

I gather little bits of paper resting on the carpet to distract myself, all to avoid having an argument with you, which is inevitable, but not impossible to hold off so long as I gather paper, little bits of it, little bits of it not only in our room, which is carpeted, but throughout our carpeted apartment, which we both hate, the carpet, not the apartment, and the little pieces everywhere, which I hate, and which you seem to ignore entirely even though they are your little bits of paper, and it only takes picking up one little bit of paper before I become committed to picking up all the little pieces you have unwittingly let fall from your books, books with thousands of little pieces of paper, ripped from paper bookmarks, the ones every bookstore stuffs into a book under one page and above another page, no not stuffed, inserted rather, and I am thankful they, the bookstore employees, only give out one bookmark with each purchase even if that purchase is several books and not a bookmark for each book, which would give everyone an equal amount of bookmarks to books, which is absolutely unnecessary since no one needs an equal amount of bookmarks to books, I think as I pick up another little bit of bookmark that you have transformed into a tinier bookmark, no, not transformed, merely torn, nothing has been altered from one state to another besides becoming smaller and smaller which is definitely a change of being, but definitely not a transformation, becoming a smaller being, unless maybe it is a transformation, the process, your process, definitely being a kind of multiplication, the being, in this case a bookmark, being spliced, or in this case, torn, is becoming the same, but smaller, and with more of them, yes multiplying as it were, and now I want to ask you if you ever notice the little bits of paper throughout our carpeted apartment, bits of paper in every color, and the colorful paper on the carpet, the carpet being only one color, a beige or something like beige, and the confetti-like paper of every color, because bookmarks come in every color, I want to ask if you ever notice them, the bits of paper on our carpet, or maybe if you have ever noticed a bookmark bit, yes bookmark bit is a little bit of paper from a bookmark, missing from the book you were reading or returning to, returning to so you could write down a passage, have you ever noticed a bookmark bit missing from a book, a book with a thousand other bits, I want to ask, have you ever noticed one missing, some line or phrase or page you hoped to revisit, but can’t because I hold the torn bookmark bit in my hand, a pink bit, for instance, and it is not in your book, for instance, and so you can’t return to the line, phrase, page, and I can’t ask you because it will immediately lead to the fight we are avoiding, not The Fight, we settled that years ago, this fight, an argument really, a tiff really, something small, like a little bit of paper, something that will be resolved once we get down to it, but we are both tired and frustrated and decided to rest, to distract ourselves, you with your books and bookmarks, forever shrinking into tiny, irregularly shaped bookmark bits, and me in the next room on my hands and knees plucking, pulling, sweeping with my hands, all the bookmark bits that have fallen out of your books and the others surrounding you, and the countless others lining our carpeted room, carpeted apartment, and I think you are some sort of creator, no one else creates these little bits of paper, I think, I believe I would be able to tell any one of your little bits of paper from anyone else’s, and I look at you and then I remember the tiff, the fight (not The Fight) that we are putting off, you with your book and me with your little bits of paper, I pluck green, pink, blue, I see a partial bookstore logo, I see some writing, I see half an address that I could try to decipher, could piece together once I have purged this room of little paper bits and move to the hallway, kitchen, laundry room, stairwell, living room, and closets, how did little bits of paper get in our closets, but there’s really no point in questioning such things, leave the questions for the fight, yes I could decipher the bookmarks by piecing them together, the little bits of paper, once I have a good amount, I have so many now, maybe it’s a good amount, I could piece them together, all the pieces you have separated from the whole, I could work against you, reconstructing bookmarks with scotch tape, but once the idea enters my mind it feels petty, all because we are frustrated with one another, not furious, just a little frustrated, nothing to warrant such petty thoughts, a pettiness of undoing what you have done, and I think I could do this faster with a vacuum, clean up the little paper bits that is, I could do this entirely different than being on my hands and knees, but I see you reading and I don’t want to be noisy, pushing the vacuum through the carpeted apartment we hate and what’s really the point now since this room is almost done, clear of paper that is, it looks quite neat now, and all thanks to us avoiding an argument and how long will we keep at this, avoiding it when we know it’s going to happen sooner or later and I look back at you again as you pry apart another little bit of paper and place it in the book, at a page you must revisit and so you must mark for later, and there in the place you marked that mustn’t be forgotten is now a little bit of paper, and you rip a few more bits even though you haven’t found the next place to mark, even though I am holding a neat pile of little bits of paper, you create more and more and we could be here like this, with you shredding paper and me gathering it up, for an eternity, or maybe long enough to forget about the fight, the tiff really, that we are avoiding, that we may very well forget if we just keep going like this, you creating and me gathering, and what could one of those marked places possibly say that is special enough to mark, but not remember, of course who can remember everything, especially if they are words, and now I can’t remember what words we used to start the fight we chose to postpone, let’s pause and cool our heads, we said, we are very tired, we said, very frustrated, we said, let’s take a few minutes to consider why we said what we said, we said, because one of us must of said something to set the other off, which has been happening more frequent lately, everyone over extended with work and writing and planning the wedding and looking for a new apartment, one without carpeting, and who will clean this, who will go fetch that, and we said don’t forget I did this and the other acknowledges, yes you did do this, but also, I did that, and the other acknowledges that yes you did do that, and we go back and forth until it seems futile and we decide to pause, to take a break and cool our heads, what will you do, I ask, read, you say, and you, you ask, clean, I say, and we went back and forth so much before we chose to pause that I can’t remember how it started, maybe it was about paper, maybe it started as I was watching a bookmark become many, and I mentioned paper everywhere, but no, because the books and the paper came out after we started the fight, but no, because the books and paper are everywhere, always everywhere, except for right now in this room where I have gathered the pieces together into a nice pile, and if only I could do what you do to books to my brain, that is put little bits of paper to mark a spot so that you can return to it, but I can’t return to the start of the argument because I have no little bit of paper to place in my memory and now you are up, you have set down your book and the little bits of paper, and I stand up too, and you come over and kiss me on the check, ask if you should start dinner, and I say something like yes that would be great, and then I ask if you need help, and you say something like, not at this moment but if you could cut some bread and make the salad in about twenty minutes that would be great, and I say, of course, let me just finish what I am doing here, and you leave to the kitchen as I cup one of my hands and begin to fill it with little bits of paper, and then music starts to come from down the carpeted hall, from the kitchen, and you begin to sing and I think how much I love your singing, how you have a lovely voice, how you should really start recording songs again, even if it’s just a little, just for fun, even if you don’t share it with anyone, and I see the rest of the night playing out in my mind as if it has already happened, you finish cooking, and I finish preparing the salad, and we eat and talk, and then we have the fight, and then it is done, it is over and I do the dishes and we go to sleep, and tomorrow you will wake and read and tear more paper to mark all the places you must revisit, and that paper will fall out of your books, and I will see them scattered throughout our home and all this gathering today now seems so useless, so utterly pointless, all to avoid having a fight that we both knew would happen sooner or later so I undo my work, I put the little bits of paper back where I found them, back to the best of my ability, to the best of my recollection, and it is a faster process than all the gathering I had done, which is fine, everything is fine, the fight will happen and then it will be over, and we will be fine, and when there is no more paper left in my hands, I head towards the kitchen to hear you sing.

Martin Piñol is a librarian living in San Francisco, California. He is the co-author of the chapbook Everything in the Speaking of It (Alley Cat Books, 2019) and plays in the band cupii.

15 September 2023