Stolen Shelf

Based on the state of reading books and an actual Instagram reel I found.

I visited the little street library every Thursday, sometimes in the late morning or early afternoon—my first day without university classes. It sits just off the corner near the cafe with cheap pastries and the park bench that creaks like an old prayer. The library looks like something out of a fairy tale—red doors, green roof, hinges brass-bright in the sun. I like to imagine it breathing slowly and quietly, like a sleeping creature that dreams in paper and glue.

Most weeks, I take a book and leave a freshly finished one—a private trade. Sometimes I sneak in the ones people might not expect to find, like the strange ones or the ones that make me feel less like a mistake and more like a question worth asking. I always hope someone else finds them in the right moment, when they need a mirror or an escape route more than entertainment.

Perth does something to me. People still read here—not just online, not just scrolling past, but with their hands and their time. The bookstores are alive, glowing with handwritten picks by the major chains, and whole shelves dedicated to second-hand or forgotten titles. It’s not flashy, but it’s present. You can feel it in the way people linger.

Back home in Singapore, bookstores are almost as good as gone. The big ones shuttered slowly—Borders, Times Bookstores, Page One—and the independents went quieter, like birds disappearing before a storm. There’s Kinokuniya and Popular, still holding out like temples of stories, but the country doesn’t feel like it breathes books the way it used to. When I told my parents, they nodded with that familiar sadness. We used to visit bookstores like people visit churches, mosques, or temples. Now there are tablets in a space where new releases once stood.

My mother used to say that reading sharpens the mind, but the best books make you think with your heart as well. She handed me books like medicine. “This one will make you think,” she’d say. Or, “Tell me what you felt when you finished.” It was never about being smart; it was about being alive in the right places.

So I keep the cycle going. Take one, leave one. Sometimes I pass by without swapping, just to see what stories the neighbourhood is telling this week.

But one Thursday, something had changed. The box looked the same—red, green, glass window smudged with fingerprints—but the weight inside had shifted.

A Bible sat alone on the middle shelf.

Not a pocket one—this was thick and leather-bound, the kind with gold edges and red-lettered verses. Too big for the shelf, really. It looked like it had been placed with care, reverence almost. But it wasn’t the presence of the Bible that made my stomach turn; it was the absence of what had been there before.

All gone.

No, not just gone—stolen.

I looked around the base of the shelf, half expecting to see torn pages scattered in the grass, but there was nothing: no covers, no fragments, not even a trace of colour in the dirt. Maybe someone had yanked them out of anger and carried them away. Maybe they’d been tossed into a bin either far from or around here. I couldn’t be sure, only that they weren’t stolen for love, need, or even curiosity.

I didn’t touch the Bible. I just stood there, the air warm against my skin, thinking about how easily a space meant for everyone could be claimed by someone who believed in only one kind of truth. The irony would’ve been funny if it didn’t feel like a warning. The books that warned us about control had been the first to go.

I went home and didn’t tell anyone. That night, I pulled books off my shelf and placed them gently into a canvas tote bag. Giovanni’s Room. My Place. The Joy Luck Club. Men in the Sun. Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret.. The Little Prince. Freshly finished books that had sat with me when I needed them most. Titles I hoped someone else might stumble upon at the right time. I also added a sticky note pad and a pen.

I returned the following afternoon. The Bible was still there, alone on the shelf like a sermon with no one to hear it. I opened the little door and began stacking the other books around it—not to erase it, but to remind it that it wasn’t the only story that mattered.

My soft paperbacks looked impossibly small next to the Bible as I pressed them gently into place. The shelf felt different now. Not restored exactly, but realigned. I paused, reached into my tote bag, and pulled out the pen and sticky notes. Leaning against the wood, I scribbled a line I didn’t plan, but believed.

“If stories are dangerous, maybe that just means they’re alive.”

I peeled off the note and stuck it on the edge of the middle shelf, so that anyone who peered into the glass or opened the door would see it. Then I shut the door again, listened to the soft click of the latch, and walked away.

Some stories are borrowed. Some are forgotten.

And some are stolen.

But stories have a way of finding their way back—one page and voice at a time.