The Margin Still Has My Countdown

The library's open until four during finals and I told myself I was only here because the office wifi's been down since Tuesday. That's true. It's also true I walked straight to the third floor corner table without checking a map, past a whole reading room of head-down students who are all, unmistakably, twenty-two.

I picked up the same book I was writing in the last time I sat here. I didn't plan that either, not really, it was already out on the reshelving cart with my old due-date slip still tucked in as a bookmark, four years expired.

The margin has my handwriting in it. Small, cramped, pressing too hard into the page the way I only write when I'm not sleeping. eleven days. then, under it, eight. a countdown I don't remember keeping, next to a paragraph about entropy I definitely didn't understand at the time either.

I'm not failing anything now. I have a job. Nobody's grading this. But it's past three and I'm back at this exact table for a different deadline, counting a different number down in my head, and I can't find the part of me that's supposed to have grown out of this chair.

I put the book back on the cart, spine out, the way I found it. I don't write anything new in the margin. I just leave the old countdown there, unanswered, and go back to my laptop.