The Weight of Papyrus

I trace the ink, still wet,

as shadows stretch like hungry hands

across the scrolls.

The air hums with the breath of a thousand voices,

each syllable a spark,

each word a world.

The shelves groan,

not with age, but with the weight of forgotten dawns:

Homer’s wine-dark seas,

Euclid’s perfect lines,

the whispered names of gods

who no longer answer.

Dust settles on my fingers,

fine as the ash that will come.

I smell it already,

the bitter tang of burning reed,

the vanishing thought.

They say fire purifies.

But what of the silence it leaves?

A child once asked me,

How do you hold the sky?

I showed her the atlas,

its edges frayed,

its stars still bright.

Now, I press my palm to the parchment,

as if flesh could shield

what flame will claim.

Outside, the mob shouts.

Inside, the ink runs like tears.

I write my name in the margin,

not for memory,

but to say:

We were here.

We knew.

We tried.

I studied the Hellenistic period at school and fell in love with its contradictions: the way Alexandria was both Greek and Egyptian, both a beacon of enlightenment and a pawn in political games. The library wasn’t just a building to me; it was a dream of permanence in an impermanent world. The scribe in the poem is undoubtedly me, in another time, clutching at the same fear: What if everything we’ve built, everything we’ve loved, can be erased in an afternoon?