The Forgotten Index

The silence breathes.

Not a whisper, not a sigh,

only the sound of dust settling

between pages that no one turns anymore.

Twinkling specks of time, floating,

a constellation of lost minutes,

coating the covers I once loved.

The books remember.

They do not forgive.

I see their spines bending under the weight

of knowledge I never chased,

words I cataloged but never claimed.

Fingers brushing over leather bindings,

searching for something,

but finding only echoes of what could have been.

I have spent years

stacking the wisdom of strangers,

tending to the words of the long-dead,

while my own stories—unwritten—

whispered their regret into the corners of my mind.

Did I inspire anyone?

Did I change anything?

The twinkling glow of the library lamps

catches the gilt of forgotten covers,

but their light does not warm me.

My journey was one of archiving,

collecting the voices of the past

while silencing my own.

There was a time

when I thought I had years,

when I believed that books were a map,

guiding me toward something greater.

Now, I see they were a refuge—

a place to hide.

Regret presses between the pages,

folded into dog-eared margins,

scribbled in fading ink.

I wish I had lived outside these walls,

had written my own story,

instead of merely keeping the records

of those who dared to live.

I close my eyes and listen.

The silence remains.