The bookshop on Lexington closed today. I only learned this when I walked past at noon and found the windows already soaped white, the shelves inside stripped bare except for one forgotten volume lying face-down on the sill.

I'd been meaning to go in for weeks—months, really. There was a poetry section in the back corner where the floorboards creaked, and the owner, a woman whose name I never learned, always left a thermos of tea on the counter that she'd offer to anyone who stayed longer than ten minutes. I never stayed. I'd browse, select nothing, nod politely, and leave with that particular guilt of the person who loves books but buys them online.

The forgotten volume turned out to be a collection of Mary Oliver's work. Wild Geese. I know that poem by heart, the one about not having to be good, about letting the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Standing there with my hand on the cold glass, I wondered if the owner had left it deliberately, or if it was just chance. Either answer felt like an accusation.

I tried the door. Locked, of course. A handwritten note taped inside read: Thank you for 34 years. Keep reading. The handwriting slanted left, the ink slightly faded as if the note had been written days ago, waiting.

On the walk home, I thought about all the small kindnesses I'd intended but never enacted. The thank-you notes I meant to send. The stories I promised to read for friends. The bookshop I'd meant to support. Intention without action is just another form of silence.

Tonight I'm writing a scene where a character finds a closed door and doesn't walk away. She waits. She writes her own note and slips it underneath. It doesn't change anything, but maybe that's not the point. Maybe the point is refusing to let the moment pass unmarked.

The thermos is probably in a box somewhere now, still half-full of cold tea.

#fiction #writing #regret #smallkindnesses