There is a shelf I have not taken anything down from in three years,…

There is a shelf I have not taken anything down from in three years, and I have finally admitted to myself what it actually is.

It is the shelf of books I want to have read. Not to read. To have read. Every one of them is on it because of who having read it would make me, which is a completely different appetite from the one that makes you pick something up on a Tuesday evening.

I am not getting rid of them. I would just like to stop pretending the shelf is a queue, because it has not been one for about three years.