"Some people write diaries. I write instructions for the future I'm afraid I'll forget."
⸻
There's a silence that only libraries understand.
Not the hush of voices held in check, nor the mechanical stillness of forgotten buildings—
—but the deep, echoing quiet of memory. Of stories waiting patiently to be remembered.
The library on 3rd and Waverly was still standing. Somehow.
A brick husk clinging to time.
Still smelled like musty pages, radiator dust, and maybe—if I let my memory drift just far enough—forgotten raincoats.
I hadn't stepped foot in there since high school.
Since before I knew her name.
Or maybe since just after.
Now I said it like a mantra. A ward against forgetting.
Elara Morrin. Elara Morrin. Elara Morrin.
As if saying it enough could anchor her to the world again. As if words could reverse entropy.
⸻
The shelves stretched out before me like memory lanes—crooked and whispering. Some bore the weight of age, bowed in the middle. Others were empty, abandoned like thoughts you never finish having.
Each step forward made the floor creak underfoot, like it was remembering me too.
I kept glancing down the aisles, half-expecting her to appear in some thin space between fiction and folklore, brushing hair from her eyes, saying something absurd like:
"Took you long enough."
But she didn't.
So I sat at the back table, the one near the flickering lamp that buzzed like a bad secret, and opened the journal I'd brought.
The cover read in fading ink:
The Archive of Almost
Inside were dozens of pages—some neatly penned, others scribbled in fits of insomnia. Some were full of longing. Others full of dread. Most were addressed to no one.
But a few—too many—were written to her.
To Elara.
Some letters I remembered writing.
Others were unfamiliar, written in handwriting that looked almost like mine, but wrong. Like I'd been a different version of myself. Or someone had been writing as me.
One page stopped me cold.
⸻
March 12th
Dear Aiden,
If you're reading this, you've forgotten again. That's okay. You always forget around this time.
I don't blame you. Memory is a hallway with too many locked doors.
Just promise me this time, when the rain starts falling upward, you'll listen instead of looking.
She hides in the margins. She always has.
Her name was Yesterday.
And so was yours.
⸻
I stared at the words until the ink wavered, blurred, dissolved. Not because I was crying, though I might've been.
The page felt familiar—not just in tone, but physically.
Edges worn. Folded. Creased down the middle.
Like it had been read again and again, then tucked back into place—always waiting for the right moment.
I didn't remember writing it.
But I remembered reading it. In another version of this life. Or maybe another version of me.
⸻
I turned to the library computer. Ancient. Barely functioning.
The login screen flickered, then gave way to the catalog system with a wheezing sigh of pixels.
I didn't search her name.
Instead, I typed the words:
Her Name Was Yesterday
The system glitched once.
Froze.
Then one result appeared.
Author: E. Morrin
Title: Her Name Was Yesterday
Published: Unknown
Location: Sub-Level B – Archive Access Only
Sub-Level B?
I didn't know there was a Sub-Level B.
⸻
There were no signs. No maps.
But I followed instinct—or whatever whisper had taken root inside me.
Past the microfilm reels, the roped-off genealogy room, past dusty shelves labeled "Defunct Reference," I found an old steel door marked Staff Only. It groaned open like a warning.
A concrete stairwell spiraled downward into dark.
As I descended, the air changed. Heavier. Older. Like inhaling dust that remembered secrets.
Each step asked a question:
Why are you doing this?
And each time, the answer echoed:
Because if she exists on paper… maybe I'm not broken. Maybe I'm just waking up.
⸻
The room at the bottom was colder than it should've been.
No windows. Just flickering overhead light and rows of locked filing cabinets wrapped in rusted chain.
But on a plain table in the center, under a single cone of yellow light—
There it sat.
A small, worn book.
The title printed in uneven type:
Her Name Was Yesterday
by Elara Morrin
I hesitated.
My hands trembled.
Then, carefully, I picked it up.
The moment I opened the cover, I forgot how to breathe.
The first line read:
He loved me before he was born.
I waited for him to remember.
He always does.
Just not in time.
⸻
I turned the pages slowly.
And there—woven in poetic fragments and broken prose—was my life.
My memories.
My silence.
A scene of me as a boy, crying in a bathtub I didn't think anyone had seen.
A phrase I'd whispered at seventeen to no one but the wind.
A dream I'd had once—of a house with no clocks, no time, only doorways leading backward.
But every moment… was from her point of view.
She had been watching me.
Loving me from the periphery.
Like a ghost.
Like someone who had never truly lived in the world—but had lived in me.
⸻
At the very back of the book, there was a return slip.
Stamped in red:
Due: Yesterday
I looked up, and for a second—
Just one second—
I saw her.
A reflection in the blackened window of the archive room.
She was standing there.
Yellow raincoat.
Wet hair curling at the ends.
A look in her eyes that said:
Remember me.
But when I turned around—
The room was empty.
All that remained was a note. Folded once, like a breath held too long.
In handwriting I didn't recognize.
I exist more when you miss me.
⸻
And I did.
God, I did.