Akashic Appointment

Opal light on my fingertips—
desk-lamp buzz, a pocket sun
held low over the woodgrain.

I come in quiet, no shoes on stone.
The book is open already,
as if my name was pencilled
in the margin days ago.

Gold ink keeps to the edges:
notes I wrote at 02:00,
hurt folded into neat sentences,
pressed flat, stacked deep
like a dried flower in a due-date slip.

No clerk, no throat-clearing.
Just the desk:
card drawer half-out,
stamp pad dark as a bruise,
and a chair that doesn’t move away.

You don’t look up to measure me.
You don’t hurry my lungs.
You point—
and the line does what lines do:
it holds.

Say my name again—
in my mouth.
Turn the page again—
under my thumb.

I used to chase signs like rent due, damn—
pray for a door, then dip
the moment it loosened its latch.
Truth lived in drafts, unsent,
blue-lit on my phone at the edge of sleep.
I acted hard, still ended up
flat-backed, bargaining with ceilings.

Now the librarian is me: calm eyes.
No scare talk. No “fix it fast.”
Just receipts—dates, totals, stupid maths—
and the soft shush of paper
when I lay them down.

A keyring used to live in my fist.
I kept my heart under it.
You can’t heal what you keep locked,
so I set the keys beside the stamp
and listen to the small, final clink.

Wax warms my hands.
It drips—slow evidence—
onto the corner of a letter
I never mailed.

Then the pattern clicks:
stamp pressed into warm wax,
not a curse, not a cage—
a route back, impressed in heat,
a map you can feel with your thumb.

Say my name again—
on the page.
Turn the page again—
past the old date.

I don’t need perfect.
I need honest, right now:
my own hand steadying my chest,
my own breath staying put
when the drawer slides shut.

Say my name again—
ink-cool, legible.
Turn the page again—
and don’t flinch.

Say my name again—
stamp it, gentle.
I won’t fade again.

Opal light on my fingertips—
and the lamp keeps buzzing,
that little sun refusing
to go out on schedule,
while the book lies open,
waiting for the next clean turn.