Kathryn Nicolai

the way the familiar halls looked so strange and lonely in different light, the way my footfalls sounded in the quiet when it had never been quiet enough to hear them before.

Crossing the room, I noticed a reading nook on a small landing that looked down over the main collection.

No one was there, but there were a few books left on the table, and I stopped to read the titles.

There was a classic mystery I'd read three or four times before, several titles I didn't recognize.

And at the bottom of the stack, an old history book with a crinkly cellophane cover.

I turned it back to front, reading the title and the summary in stunned disbelief.

It pertained to exactly the topic I'd been studying up on this semester.

In fact, it felt like a missing puzzle piece to my research.

I set my cup on a table and flipped through a few chapters.

and crossed the mezzanine to the staircase on the other end of the library.

Below me I could see bowed heads and open books, pens moving across notebooks, and at one table a patron who'd put their head down on their arms and seemingly fallen asleep.

I could see how that could happen.

The same quiet atmosphere that made for good studying could be ideal for sleep.

And I imagined one of the librarians needing to rouse the tabletop sleeper.

I was determined to get a bit further into my notes.

I imagined satisfied diners

leaning back in their booths and considering dessert.

No buzzing fluorescent bulbs or overhead panels.

And the sounds, already soft, simply because of the nature of the building, seem even more muffled.

if there is work to be done after what might have already been a long day, then it should, at least, be done calmly.