Library

I recently moved into my college dorm to start my freshman year (which is, in part, why I have been so inactive online recently) and in my explorations of the campus I have discovered that the library is especially intriguing. It’s nearly always almost empty, especially on the upper floors, and it’s filled with old and obscure books, encyclopedias, and periodicals.

The building is kind of old, and it has a bit of an eerie vibe, especially if you’re there alone, or if you’re there alone at night. Something about the long empty walkways between shelves and shelves of abandoned books, covering esoteric subjects that probably no one will ever read– there’s definitely as much creepiness as intrigue. And I definitely try to avoid the elevators as much as possible. But it’s thus far my favorite spot on campus.

Anyway, I was bored the other night and wrote this short thing– thanks for sitting through the backstory.

It was silent as I walked among the bookshelves– the kind of silence that seemed in a way anachronistic, detached from the hustle and bustle of modern life; devoid of the chiming of smartphones, the ripples of suppressed laughter. I could pretend, for a moment, that I was the only person in the world. 

    My eyes flicked over the endless rows of shelves, stacked with tomes that breathed the lives of centuries long-past into the vaguely chilled air around me. I could hear nothing but the sounds of my own breathing, the distant creak of a door hinge, an elevator chime, the distant rustling of the wind outside. 

    I breathed in the loneliness. I reveled in the solitude of these deserted library shelves: suspended in time, hidden from view.