Mr Beast

I. The Appointment

I was summoned on a Tuesday, by a letter of plain grey,

To a district of the city where the light forgets to stay.

The address was just a number, and a time—half past the hour—

When the world begins to tremble, and the fragile lose their power.

No signature, no letterhead, no purpose was explained.

Just a pull upon my spirit, like a thread of weather strained.

I went not out of courage, but a curiosity

For what kind of institution would be summoning for me.

The building was a narrow thing, of soot-stained brick and glass,

Like a forgotten book on a shelf too high for time to pass.

The door was oak, unvarnished, with a tarnished brass bell-pull.

The air smelled of old paper, and a silence that was full.

II. The Keeper

She did not look a day past thirty, nor less than a thousand years.

Her eyes held still Novembers, and the shedding of all fears.

She wore a simple sweater, and her hair was long and grey,

And she sorted through the silence in a methodical way.

“You are here,” she said, not asking. “It is right that you have come.

Every lifetime gets a visit, when the soul has grown numb.

This is not a place of endings, nor a place to make amends.

This is the Library of Last Things. I am its keeper and its friends.”

She led me through an archway, and the world inside was vast.

The ceiling was the night sky, with its constellations cast.

But instead of endless shelves of books, stretching row on row,

There were simply glass-domed cases, with a soft, internal glow.

III. The Exhibits

“Here,” she said, and gestured to a case upon the left,

“Is the final breath of laughter, from a love now long bereft.

Not the laugh itself, you understand, but the breath that made the sound,

Before it joined the common air and settled in the ground.”

In the next case, a single, perfect, undefended tear,

Glistening with the memory of a long-forgotten fear.

“This one fell in a moment of true, unlooked-for grace,

When a human finally accepted they had lost a hopeless race.”

We walked on, through the quiet. A forgotten lullaby,

Trapped inside a mother’s sigh. The last “goodbye” from a “goodbye.”

The final, trusting glance a child gives before the world turns cruel,

Preserved in a solution that was clear and deep and cool.

There was the final leaf that clung to a tree in sixty-three.

The last note of a symphony that nobody could see.

The final, dying ember of a fire in a hearth

That warmed a family now dissolved back to the patient earth.

IV. The Empty Case

We came at last to a small plinth, central in the hall,

With a case of finest crystal, and with nothing there at all.

Just a space of pure potential, a void of perfect black,

Waiting for a final, sacred thing to fill the lack.

“This one,” said the Keeper, and her voice was soft and low,

“Is reserved. It is the one thing we do not yet know.

It is the final, forgotten thing. The last of all the lasts.

When this case finds its tenant, the die of time is cast.”

A chill, not of the temperature, but of a deep design,

Traveled up my spine, a cold and ancient line.

“What will it be?” I asked her, my voice a trembling thread.

She only smiled a gentle smile and softly shook her head.

“It could be the last shadow, when the final light is blown.

It could be the last memory, that no one then will own.

It could be the last ‘I love you,’ or the last unanswered prayer.

It could be the last second of time, suspended in the air.”

V. The Gift

“Then why show me this?” I asked her. “Why summon me tonight?

To know that all this beauty ends, and vanishes from sight?”

“No,” she said. “The very opposite. I show you so you see

The unbearable, precious value of what still is free.”

“You have heard the final laughter, so you know your own is gold.

You have seen the last of trust, so you know the trust you hold.

This library is not a tomb, it is a lighthouse beam,

A reminder screaming through the fog of every waking dream.”

She led me to the door again, the ordinary street,

Where the rain had started falling, and the city felt the beat

Of a million living hearts. The traffic’s muffled roar

Was a symphony of continuity, now meaning so much more.

“Go,” she said. “Your visit is concluded. You have seen.

The Library is always with you, in the spaces in-between.

The last things give the present its unbearable, sweet weight.

Now go, and do not hesitate. Do not hesitate.”