Close-in day at the library. It feels more like last call. A few people were straggling up until 11:30 but they've pretty much stopped now. The piles of books on the counter that I remember from years past aren't there. There's no chaos, no noise, no stressed student workers, no people carrying in fifty books to return at once. The library is shutting down with a whimper. The only witness is the crazy-looking old woman who's started coming in this year, with gray hair like a decaying beehive or, perhaps even better, like a cloud of dirty smoke that follows wherever she goes. She has a face that has been flattened by life, every last bit of life and hope squeezed out. She walks like a Romero zombie in her loose-fitting early 20th century clothes and gigantic plastic glasses, shambling like a lost soul at a bus station that closed down years ago. And now I blow out the candle, and the semester is over.