Saying Goodbye

I felt like I was at a wake but I wasn't mourning a loved one. I was mourning the closing of a store, one that I had watched slowly dying over a year or more as the book selections got thinner and the CDs and DVDS became nearly non-existent.
And this day was the last day, the sun shining through the large windows into a store where hardly anything was left. The middle of the store was like a desert, nothing but carpet for yards. Men moved empty bookshelves off the floor. I saw red brick where large wooden shelves full of books used to be.
A young girl bounced playfully off a blue wall in the now-gone music section. I didn't bother going by the coffee shop I spent lazy Sunday afternoons drinking a small white chocolate mocha and reading books I had grabbed off the shelf. The cafe had closed two months ago soon after Borders announced it was liquidating its 399 store.
And here I was mourning this place, this thing that had never spoken, this place I had never hugged, but a place where I sought solace after a long day at work, perusing new magazines, rummaging through the new books at the table near the front, and lounging in the too-comfortable seats scattered throughout the store.
Borders was a place of memories collected over years. I made friends here, some long gone and some still very much present. I had deep conversations with people in the coffee shop and read whole books I never bought. Here I looked longingly at a curly-haired law student I never got the gumption to ask out.
And I asked out another girl who unfortunately had a boyfriend but who nonetheless praised my approach of riffing off an Alicia Keys song (and no, I won't tell you which one because I'd like to use that approach again if you don't mind).
This is the place where I met a stranger and had a one-time connection I'll never forget and I still smile when I think of those wonderful moments we had together talking and laughing.
Borders was my refuge from the stresses of the world, the place I got lost in other people's words instead of the ones I wrote for a living. The place I discovered new voices and fell in love again with the ones I had forgotten in the blur of living.
So here I was in mourning as I scoured the last remnants of a once booming store, grabbing six books to buy for a $1 a piece. I breathed in the emptiness and locked into my head what used to be that wasn't there anymore.
And I walked out the door one last time and didn't look back because I have new memories to make.