The doors are often open. I enter here to write. In the corridor, a few children stand still. I once wore a navy uniform with ribbon and walked around here. As I step, white dust blows in the sun, as if it has been burning for a long time. It is spring. In my memory, school is always a season of white magnolias. No one moves during this time of day. I walk in the dust, dark fingers curling in my pockets, memories tearing like white paper beyond my nails, footsteps echoing. This is the floor of the library.
I open the door and walk in.
-1
Here is a deep library. A faint light comes from the ceiling, and a book slowly descends. It stacks lightly, like air, silently, like water. A few sheets of paper blow out of the cover. I reach to pick them up, but my hand is outside. Faded letters. I can’t read the title. Bubbling, dispersing sound that can only be heard in a library.
I could stay here forever. I go through here one by one, to make this place a library. I can’t bring the book because I’ve seen a book about libraries, and there were albums in it and, also my mom, but here isn’t a hospital, a hand is flipping through the pages, and it walks into a small, white room where books are stacked like walls. I’ve been folding it up and holding it in my mouth. The library keeps getting sticky in there. My teeth ache every day, my throat is getting hoarse, and I can see the white of my hands as I turn the pages. I can’t see the moon in my nails.
1
I decide to write about a library. About a library that no one visits and has never visited, so even I don’t know about it. I wonder who brought the books here, the letters keep disappearing. Without the light on, I see things and wonder where the light is coming from. Someone walks down the hall with a candle like a ghost.
He says he is on his way to the library. He says he’s been looking for the library his whole life. I can’t show the way because the corridor is dark. The sound of silent footsteps.
1, 1
A librarian or librarians. I can’t see their faces. When I turn the corner, I see a librarian’s hand, a neck, then black hair. They keep changing positions. There is the book that I was looking at yesterday, and the book I was looking at today has disappeared somewhere. They keep pushing the cart downstairs where they say there is vent, but the machine is broken. Someone says that the books can’t breathe; they have to open the door by force, and they have to hold their breath for ventilation. The librarians turn their heads in unison. The sound of a heavy, deep door.
1, 1, 1
A hand pulls a book from a dusty shelf. It’s an old leather album. A few black records are slipped between the photos, like fuel or bookmarks. Unable to write them down, the library keeps flickering, waiting for the next scene- flickering, blinking, winding up and opening. I’ve heard that time passes differently outside.
I put in and take out books or flip through papers depending on the cursor; the only sound a library has.
1, 2
In truth, talking about libraries is often tiring. Librarians only talk about books. I stroke the wood grains of the shelf, which must have been brought in from outside the library. There are many countries outside; their stories flow between the books, slip through my fingers, and try not to be pinned down. Sometimes I escape the librarians to meet them. They like to have eye fights; they either have no eyes or many, many eyes. I like to lose so I play with them. Yesterday they sang to me, but I couldn’t hear.
1
When we, the people of the library, were very young, it was more vibrant and full of empty bookshelves. New books came in every week and the number of librarians grew every day. We would discuss how to organize the books and the oldest librarian would win. Everyone listened to him, for no one knew more about here than he did. He had probably been to countless libraries already.
He taught us when to change the categories, how to stack the books, the proper shape of the bookshelves, and how much moisture was appropriate to preserve them. His fingers were white and long, and it was reassuring to see them. I trusted that everything would be just right. The books kept growing. When we first decided to throw them away, he was the one who was most vehemently against it. Some said he had abandoned us, some said he was still here somewhere, hiding books. We can’t see faces, one of us said, and we all laughed.
2
There was a place where people doused the ashes in water to make a wish.
0
I think of a person holding a candle.