March 20, 2025At the End of the World Is Forgetting Dick Westheimer

In the abandoned stacks of the abandoned wing of the library where abandoned books are kept—there is quiet beyond the finger-to-the-lips shush, beyond the quiet thrum of the furnace deep in the womb of this place, beyond the low hum of traffic seeping from the streets. No more sound comes from between the pages of the tomes. The dust motes whisper in dust mote tones wondering where the words have gone. There are no readers here, no sound of a novel sliding from between its companions off a shelf, no lips of a Sophomore Lit. student mouthing the final lines of a poem, no click of the lights going off when the last librarian leaves for the night. This is darker than the province of the dead, darker than between the leaves of journals and books.  This is the darkness of forgetting, of deep space with no stars, of the rocky core of a dusty dead planet.