"He Tried to Keep Them Safe"

Vintage paperbacks, wrapped in poly bags, on the shelf at the used bookstore.

He knew it was inevitable that they would get older, so he tried to keep them safe. It was a thin kind of protection, the love he had for them, one that inevitably would fail against the harshness of the years; yet he wrapped them up tightly, and for the most part, it was enough. Of course, a moment arrived when he realized that he had loved them a long time, but he sat with them less and less each day. Then, he knew. He understood that he would never stop loving them, even after he let them go.