Library stained red
The clock chimed twice,
Habitually, I folded my scarlet marked sheets,?
Adjusting my smeared diopter glasses as I glanced at the empty library beneath.?
Empty, no surprise, since the earlier hours—?
But to me, it was always just whispers and echoes that would later haunt.
Alone, always.?
I don’t mean to complain; I like the quiet, truly.?
I pull out my sheets once more and begin to write.?
I pretend I have all the time in the world,?Endlessly scribbling away in the dusk’s gleam.?My book should’ve been finished by now,?
Yet due to my actions, my chapters weave another tale.
I should’ve closed it long ago, but perhaps I am vain—?
Believing I have something new to say, that hasn’t been heard before.
I think I want to intentionally leave behind a proof of 32 years onto paper.?
At least, I never thought I’d try.
But it’s a tale that only I can tell,?
For I never gave others a chance, oh well.
I never said the chapters I wrote were about my past.
Here, my character recurs, a protagonist with a lisp.
I do not wish to share more about her, lest I spoil the surprise.?
She strung herself into work,?An avid reader against all odds.?
She came every day, and I listened to her footsteps,?
Her gentle hum as she chose her books.?
We bonded over quiet selection of authors.
And under the library’s bounty,
We decided to write a book.
One page at a time, each day.
A silent collaboration.
Each day, we sat at the teak table,?
Coffee lingered in the silence; it was the only thing the library could afford anymore.??
I found myself liking people again.?
She, too, arrived daily—??
But she never asked my name,?
And I too wasn’t eager to share.
We sat in silence for hours on end,?
Embossing lines onto dotted paper.?
At sharp 6, she’d leave, packing her kit—?
No words of farewell.?
I’d return to my desk.
Days turned to years, and now you see why the chapters lingered.?
Then, suddenly, there was a thud on the wooden boards.?
The book, it seemed, was bounded and ready for the shelf.?
I was naive, too attached to her presence after so many years.?
A book whose end I feared had come too soon.
I rambled my confessions,?
But she never turned my way.?
I spread my sheets across the table, all blank—?I didn’t want my story to end.?And so, I ended hers.
My sheets were finally full, slowly soaking up the red. ?
And in the silence that followed, I made it clear once again—
Why the library was mine and mine alone, yet again in a devilish affair I still left the last page blank.
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