They stand like paper dolls holding hands in silent solidarity quietly sharing in their sensitive row. Easy to tear - not to repair. I am not one of them, but I belong to them -in the quiet hum of their daily machinery; planning, sorting, procuring for our personal evolutions. I extol their virtues. Mine is a noble effort, but they are the noble ones.
My office sits in the back of the children's library facing a parking lot with four coveted spaces reserved for the librarians - a small but significant homage in a town where parking and its scarcity often headlines the local newspaper. The spaces are on a rotation marked on a chart that is taped to the back of the library’s back door. Fair and equitable - with their names and specified days of the week.
My office windows frame the daily comings and goings of local foot traffic down the shortcut alley. An internal motion sensor prompts an alert whenever anyone walks by on the way to the grocery store or in Kaitlin’s case, the library. I have watched her walk past my window for several years. We exchange smiles through the glass when our eyes meet. We don’t, when she is lost in thought. Her breezy stroll, tanned skin and long chestnut brown hair marks a life spent just beyond the city limits with the horses and the other milk-fed girls. Within the library corridors everyone’s bits and parts brush past each other down the narrow aisles, on the way to the restroom, and in the break room where the aromas of their home-brought lunch stews and sandwiches waft through the halls - a purposeful blend of comfort food and frugality - staples of the librarian diet.
Intimate touch points don’t come easily amongst the librarians but signs of Kaitlin’s personal life are revealed in her work area. Her tiny shrine contains a small wedding photo, wistful in white lace - her man in a kilt. A single affirmation is posted on a small bulletin board that hangs above her - a daily reminder. I wonder how many times she looked up at that sentence wishing she could commit to those words and ring affirmative. If only she could do better. A tiny plant in a terracotta pot, a yellow post-it pad and a summer reading poster that would have been hung by her had she not decided to disappear.
Grief makes people sick in their stomach like a hole of hunger that can never be filled. A hole that leaves those still present feeling partially responsible even if only by proximity. Now there are grief counselors, sullen faces and haunted hallways - corridors filled with loss and regret. Books have been abandoned, left in disarray strewn on carts - an immigrants exodus - a necessary divestiture to escape an unwitting end. Kaitlin’s end closes the library for a week. A chorus of lament for one less voice that was their own.
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