It was the kind of question,
filled with innocent curiosity,
that sent me wandering,
through the dusty corridors,
of a memory almost forgotten.
A relic bound in yellowing pages,
it once held the secrets,
of neighbors and businesses,
alphabetically organized,
like a map of our world,
before the digital dawn.
In those hefty volumes,
we\'d trace our fingers lightly,
over names like fragile glass,
whispering destinations,
through endless columns of text.
Each thin page a testament,
to a time when knowledge,
required patient discovery,
a dialing finger poised,
over a rotary phone\'s circle,
ready to connect lines unseen.
How to explain to him,
the weight of this phantom,
so absent in his universe?
Perhaps like showing him,
a dinosaur bone in a museum,
real yet impossible to imagine,
alive and lumbering,
through the modern landscape,
where information floats,
weightless as air,
and the past sinks quietly,
into the sedimentary layers,
of our collective forgetfulness.