ochre

the colour of the library wall at four in the afternoon, when the sun has gone long enough that it falls through the upper window and stains a single shelf. the colour of dried tobacco. the colour of a held breath.

in sometemple it is everywhere the building remembers warmth. you find it in the spine of a catalogue, the paper of an unread letter, the underside of a leaf after frost. it lives in the late hour, in the season just before the season turns.

it is not gold. gold is loud. ochre keeps to itself. ochre belongs to dust and to the long dusk.