Mourning Cursive - Quiet Between Lectures

Ink stains on my cuffs, coffee rings in the margins of an essay I stopped writing weeks ago. The library breathes dust and candle smoke, its silence punctuated by the turning of pages like the slow ticking of an old clock. Outside, rain gathers on the ivy, sliding down the stone as if the building itself were crying for the students it has outlived. I watch from the arched window, the lecture hall behind me still humming with words I can’t remember hearing. We used to meet here— you with your notebook full of poems and that scarf you claimed was stolen from the philosophy department. Your laughter filled these corridors, now it’s just the echo of shoes on marble, mine among them, searching for something I won’t find. The professor’s voice still carries through the thin walls, Latin phrases I once translated with you, sprawled across the floor in autumn light. Now the words fall apart in my hands like brittle leaves pressed between pages, too fragile to unfold without breaking. I stay long after the lamps go out, Long after the candles’ smoke has joined untouched books on the fourth floor, writing notes in the brown leather journal you gifted me after a long midterm study session, listening to the rain recite Dostoevsky against the glass. The night smells of paper, ink, and the glacial warmth of your absence Fading into the rainy night.