The Librarian of Burned Books

by Brianna Labuskes

“Books are a way we leave a mark on the world, aren’t they? They say we were here, we loved and we grieved and we laughed and we made mistakes and we existed. They can be burned halfway across the world, but the words cannot be unread, the stories cannot be untold. They do live on in this library, but more importantly they are immortalized in anyone who has read them.”

This was war, after all. There was no place for sentimentality.

“You think poetry and life can’t exist in harmony with each other?”