Closing time

Locked the door of my bookshop for the last time today. Twenty-two years. The rent tripled. The customers moved online. I held on as long as I could. My regulars came by — some brought flowers, one brought whiskey. We sat among the empty shelves and told stories about the books we'd sold. A man cried because he'd proposed to his wife in the poetry section. That section has been empty for a year. The shelves are gone but the stories aren't.