Keeping Tabs 📚

Some readers underline. Some highlight. Me? I tab. Religiously. Obsessively. Perfectly aligned little flags sticking out of the pages like whispers. I think it’s the Virgo in me—I need order, I need colors, I need every shade to mean something. A specific, deep maroon for the quotes I want engraved on my heart forever. A softer baby pink for the moments I know will replay in my head for the next two weeks. Deep blues for sad lines, marigolds for joy, autumn leaves for quiet little truths I didn’t expect but couldn’t let go of. Sometimes I even try to make the tabs match the color of the cover, like the book and I are have a little secret, conspiring together. And as much as I want to scribble in the margins, underline every word that makes me feel something, I don’t. Because books aren’t my diary—they’re meant to tell their own story, in their own voice. I want the next person who picks up that book to have their own authentic experience, without my handwriting whispering over the author’s words. So I let the book breathe. I keep my thoughts folded neatly inside those little tabs, almost like I’m leaving a secret map for myself. A way back to the passages that shook me, healed me, or broke me just enough to remember them. And maybe that’s enough: my feelings are marked, but the story still belongs to everyone who dares to enter it.

• Reader
• Books
• Tabs