The Seed Library at Closing

In the last hour, the drawers breathe out dust and basil, small envelopes sleeping in their paper cradles. Each packet holds a weather no one has named: tomato suns, bean ladders, the hush of dill.

The volunteer stamps the return slips by lamplight. Outside, the parking lot shines like a pond of tar. Inside, a child’s thumbprint lingers on a borrowed label, a soft crescent the size of a future leaf.

I lift a marigold seed between finger and glass jar; it is no larger than a postponed word. Yet it carries its bright insistence, the way a river carries the map of mountains.

When the bell over the door is silenced, I leave with a pocket full of promises too small to see. Night folds over the library roof, patient as soil, and somewhere under it, tomorrow rehearses green.