The Unwritten

The dust mucks up over me as I wonder if someone will visit me today.

The fading ink of the books whispers amongst themselves, wondering if someone will pick them up. It wasn’t always like this. I have hoarded hundreds of books upon my old wood, still strong all through these years. There was a time when the children were excited to visit the library, grateful to have access to the information. I would be dusted off daily, along with the books on me.

I’ve seen generations grow older in this room. The little boy and girl who once argued over the same book—built a bond over it. I’ve seen lazy students work their breath off and then visit years later—as successful people. And of all the things I’ve seen, I can assure you—nothing beats the feeling of seeing the people you’ve known since childhood grow up. Out of all the faces I’ve come across, there was one I never forgot. Dorothea, the old librarian—who was once a young girl so full of life. I’ve seen this place snatch it out of her.

It was in the early 1980s when she first came here. A girl, only a decade old. Her wistful brown eyes searched for a book like it was a treasure to be found. She scanned the entire library and then came toward me. “Hmm, is it here?” she murmured as she went over my first shelf. She stopped at the third shelf as she pulled a book out. Matilda, it read. Perchance, it was at that moment I realized I was going to see a lot more of her. Every weekend, Dorothea would visit at four in the evening. She would sit across the room, beside a window. More often than not, she would gaze at the sun for a minute before reading anything. I always thought she was a child who lacked focus. Never did it occur to me that it could’ve been a silent prayer.

Years went by, and she turned sixteen. It had been five years since her mother passed away. She would now often spend her entire day at the library, scribbling over pages and tossing them into the bin, her brown hair always messed up. She was a reader, a lovely reader—who held the book as one would hold a child; even the creases of the pages were gentle. But she wasn’t a writer. Well, not until that dorky boy, anyway. People called it naivety, but I like to see it as passion. It was because he broke her heart, and she poured it all out on paper. Penned down her first poem. And then another. And another. And she wrote till the ink bled dry, the paper drowned. She wrote until she couldn’t anymore. That’s when the writer sleeping inside her woke up. Was I glad he broke her heart? No. But I was glad because it meant that one day, I would get to hold her books on my shelves.

Unfortunately, that never happened.

You see, women didn’t have much freedom back then. They didn’t have the privilege to have their own careers, and thus they were nothing but someone’s ‘wife.’ So, when Dorothea’s father got to know about her passion for writing, he supported her. He believed in his daughter and her aspirations. Her stepmother, however, did not believe in her. And thus, when her father passed away due to ‘inexplicable circumstances,’ Dorothea was married off to a man older than her father. Her fate had always been cruel. Perhaps that’s why it was kinder to her after the marriage. Her husband passed away soon after, and at the ripe age of twenty-two—she was a widow.

She returned to the library and worked in the day. Wrote her stories in the night. And soon she was done. A book she could call her own, a story that was made of her soul. It was during the winter when she was twenty-five that she fell in love with a fellow writer. She shared with him her thoughts and her stories. She invited him into her mind and let him stay.

The devil couldn’t reach her, so he sent her a man who not only ruined her but also stole from her.

No sooner than he came, he left. He left her heartbroken, and he left with all of her. He took some of her soul—brighter than the sun, her smile, her determination. But most of all, he stole her life, her book. Her words. The same Dorothea who wrote because of heartbreak now contemplated her life as her words caused another.

It’s been four decades since the burglary. Dorothea never wrote again. Her hands, once so sure as they scribbled words into existence, trembled with the weight of what was taken from her. She stayed here, in this library, for the rest of her days. Day after day, she dusted me off, tended to the books that whispered her name in their silence, and cared for a space that cared little for her in return.

I remember the last time she sat by the window. It was a winter evening, the kind where the frost clings to the glass, and the world feels heavy. She had grown smaller, quieter, over the years—a mere shadow of the girl I once knew. She stared at the horizon until the sky turned from gold to gray, as if waiting for something. But nothing came.

She closed her eyes, her head resting against the windowpane, and I knew. She was gone.

They found her the next morning, still sitting there, her hands folded neatly in her lap. No one wept, no one lingered. The world moved on, as it always does.

But I remained. And I remembered. I remembered the girl who once prayed by the window before opening her book. The girl who scribbled stories like her life depended on it. The woman who gave her soul to words, only for the world to steal them away.

Her stories were never told. Her name never made it to the spines of the books I hold. But she is here. In the creak of my wood. In the dust that settles on my shelves. In the fading ink of books that whisper her name when no one’s listening.

Dorothea never got her ending, but I will carry her story for as long as I stand.