Photo by Documerica on Unsplash
by Kip Knott
For more than two centuries I have tried to remember exactly how I died on the job in my beloved library, but the moment of my death remains shrouded in clouds of dust and time. Is it too trite to believe that one of the other librarians did me in when they caught me flipping through the illuminated pages of the Kama Sutra with a lonely patron after hours? I shudder to think that I died among the best romance novels of the day, quietly pleasuring myself because no one desired a gray-haired, pot-bellied librarian. Perhaps a rococo book-worm groupie took pity on me and delivered me to the Hereafter before the numbers of books I sorted and shelved became the sum total of my life. Some part of me likes to believe I died with my face between dog-eared pages of The Song of Songs, savoring Paradise in wine drunk from the round goblet of a lover’s navel. All I know for certain is that now I sleep cold and alone throughout eternity in my toe-pincher bed buried beneath a heavy blanket of earth, yearning for words, for love, for one last chance to partake of all the vestal virgins in Heaven forever out of reach.
Kip Knott is a writer and part-time art dealer from Ohio. His writing has recently appeared in Best Microfiction 2024 and The Wigleaf Top 50. His most recent book of poetry, A Mob of Kangaroos, is available from Ridge Books.
