Exploring the Archives

The library is empty during these hours. The air fills only with my rare footsteps, the yellowing blush of incandescent bulbs, and settling dust agitated from books no one has touched in a decade. I browse the thin corridors, white metal shelves with rusty studs. The knowledge at my fingertips feels intimate, as if waiting, only for me.

Art and Media, Photography: 

Maybe I will find my portrait on these shelves,

Black and white, limbs posed

By an unsung surrealist,

Or recognise the shape of 

My shoulders insignificant 

In the distance of a landscape 

Shot with a wide lens and

Printed in a rare aspect ratio.

Psychology M-Z: 

I will pick out a journal

From 1975, University in Sweden,

Search for my name among the experiments.

And self-diagnose, with the first term

I fail to make up a definition for;

Read only the conclusion

"Further study needed" 

"Researchers couldn't replicate these findings".

Biology, animal behaviour: 

A longitudinal study, 

Observations made for twenty-one years

With descriptions of a changing habitat 

That remind me of the forest and streams

Where I grew up. I find myself explained

As a hunger instinct, as prey:

Furry vertebrate that produces milk, 

And (typically) gives birth to live young.