Blank pages

She placed her glasses on her desk and looked out beyond the horizon at the new born snowflakes beginning to fall freely onto the dewy, wet asphalt. The hands of the clock stretched out to announce the end of her office hours, Zoe stretched and yawned, ready to hit the road. She quickly gathered her things in her wrinkly brown leather bag, which she had gotten as a present from her grandmother, reached for her overcoat but as soon as she did, her eyes glanced from the coat hanger to something shining at her desk. Oh! It was a huge pile of paperwork she was supposed to finish today, wrapped in a neon green file. With a huge grunt she thumped back on her lousy creaking chair and began to work on it. The faster she squiggled words on the papers, the faster the snowflakes gathered on the roads, making it look like a huge cloud of whiteness. With the addition of new layers of snow, the previous ones melted under the heavy burden and mixed with the dirt underneath them, creating an impure, dirty off-whiteness. 

Meanwhile, she worked and worked, she had no idea of the situation outside as she hadn’t once lifted her head up from her paperwork. It was almost nine and the streetlights were blazing at full capacity, trying their best to melt the snow with their hot gaze, failing miserably though. Zoe pushed the papers aside with exhaustion and started to pack her things up again, unaware of the fact that the mountainous heaps of snow would trap her here all night. She pushed the exit gate with all her might but it wouldn’t budge, she tried leaning against it and pushing it but the result was always the same. She fished for her mobile phone to call a friend to come get her but there were no signals. As a last resort, she screamed her lungs out in the hopes that maybe someone would hear her and come rescue her, she waited for an answer for about half an hour. With shattered hopes, she returned to her office and thought of things to do, her gaze fell on a door marked private and she remembered how she had always wanted to see what was behind that door, maybe today’s her chance to do that. She picked up a flashlight and advanced towards the door, after countless twists and turns, the lock gave up and she slammed the door open. It was a huge disappointment seeing nothing but lousy files and boring office supplies in there. She locked the door and thought of trying other rooms too thinking maybe they wouldn’t be as big a disappointment as the first one was. 

She leapt from one hallway to another in hopes of finding something but all she found up till now was empty, dark hallways leading to either the cafeteria or the lounge. She had one whole night to spare and nothing to do, as she was lurking through the hallways, she came across the office library. She had never been much of a bookworm and had certainly never spent an hour in a library. But it was better than doing nothing, she thought to herself as she pushed the moldy, creaking wooden door of the library. But the door was locked, she thought why must it be locked? Shouldn't it be open for everyone. She had never noticed the library before but now that she did, it was hard not to notice it. She fished for her bobby pin and finally unlocked the door. After entering the library, she couldn’t see a thing, so, she fidgeted around for a light switch but only found an old oil lamp which she had no idea how to light, with much effort she finally managed to light it. She thought it weird that such a modern office would have an ancient library, with every step she took on the creaking wooden floors, her temptation to take another step, increased. In no time, she found herself crouching to the bottom shelf to pick up a book that seemed interesting from the title. It was a collection of poems by Shakespeare, she thought of a course she once took in high school in which she studied Shakespeare. She took that book and walked over to an old rocking chair by the side of the window through which she could see the snow falling hard on the surface. She placed the lamp on the window sill and made herself comfortable in the chair.  

The book was old and worn out, most of its pages eaten up in the middle adorned with nothing but remnants of words long forgotten. She flipped through the book looking for a poem that hadn’t been stripped of its end or its beginning. Suddenly but quietly, a paper fell on her lap, it was folded in half with both sides almost stuck to each other, like the arms of lovers parting for the very last time, unwilling to let go. She separated the pages and discovered what was a letter written by some unnamed person, addressed to the reader of the book. It read something like this: 

“Why are you here? this isn’t a coincidence, choosing this termite ridden book among thousands of glistening laminated books. There must be something about this book that attracted you, maybe you’re as empty as this book, maybe you’ve lost your words like these pages, maybe you don’t know what is the reason yet. But whatever the reason, I know for a fact that you need to listen to what I read right before penning down this letter. I wasn’t much of a genius and sure as hell never thought about myself and this world, I never paid any attention to the little intricacies of life. I used to work at this office and I too was living a mechanical, robotic life like you probably are. One day I was forced to read a book from the library and I too chose this crumbling book. Without even a single word, this book gave me the understanding of everything that I never knew of. By glaring at these old and empty pages, I saw my soul, I saw what was missing from my life, I had never noticed this emptiness before but now that I did, all my previous days felt like empty pages waiting to be inscribed with meaning. Have you ever thought of the emptiness that lives in your heart and soul, have you ever felt a moment of utter and complete oneness with your soul? If not, please, for the love of God, place this book back on the shelf and go see yourself in the mirror, look at your empty eyes and look hard into them. This life is nothing if you have no understanding of it. Go! Go and look at the sky like you’ve never looked before, stare at it for hours until you finally begin to see your own face in the clouds, only then would you begin to know yourself. Celebrate yourself and sing of yourself as Whitman did, find yourself and lose yourself over and over again in the vast beauty of nature.” 

She folded the letter into an even smaller rectangle, slipped it in the book and carried the book over to her desk. She placed it on the desk, picked up her laptop and began typing something. After she was done, it was almost morning and nearly time for her office hours to start again. She hurriedly printed a page from the printer, placed it elegantly on her desk, picked up the book and walked out of the door, tears rolling down her cheeks with the biggest smile her lips had ever experienced, like when it rains in the presence of the sun. The resignation letter shot her a taunting look as she pushed the door to step into a newer, brighter world, a world full of empty pages waiting for words.