After the Last Line

The final sentence.

Then the blank space.

And the quiet.

I closed the cover,

the soft thud against the table.

The weight of it in my hands,

finished.

All those voices,

all those places,

just gone. Not gone, exactly,

but folded up, put away.

And the room feels bigger,

suddenly, and colder,

now that I'm back inside it,

alone with the silence.