[ WP ] Once great literature , now great litter .

The pages looked familiar, though I could n't place them. And what was that font? Verdana? Old Bookman? I could n't place it, but it stood out in the gutter like an old friend in the audience of an Authors' Panel. 
 
 
 *... borne back ceaselessly into the past. * 
 
 
 The words, too, twinged at some buried memory from long-ago, from some time long past. Adolescence, maybe; those days when I walked through Centerfield Park with my hair in my eyes and my feet pounding flat in my boots, past the couples on the parkbench selling flowers and the skateboarding kids I never looked directly at. They never said hi. 
 
 
 I had seen this font then, too, ripped out of a novel and wrapped around one of the rosebuds I sometimes bought from Robert and Melissa. The flower was bright, a querulous yellow that seemed to bleed down the pages wrapped around its stem. I asked Melissa why the color dripped and she said it was because there was just too much for the flower to hold. Later, Mother told me they brightened their flowers with woodstain. Some part of me never believed it. 
 
 I had unwrapped the flower and given it water, then smoothed the paper flat. The yellow made it tricky to read but I could make out a couple words -- *her gray, sun-strained eyes* it said, *Jordan Baker* it said, *I was n't actually in love*. 
 
 I asked my mother if there was a book about a Jordan Baker, asked the blue-eyed girl at Borders, and then asked the brown-haired one with cat-eye glasses at Powell's when Borders shut down. Years later, when the lights went out at Powell's, I asked Marie with the stringy pale hair at the counter of George's Used Books, and when George was shut down I resorted to the landfills. I never found a book about Jordan Baker. 
 
 
 But after all these years, I've found the final page.
