The last reel in the projection room

Dear Delyara, I have worked at the same neighborhood movie theater since 1989, first selling tickets, then cleaning seats, and finally operating the projector. Tonight, I showed our last film. The building has been sold to a company that plans to turn it into luxury apartments, and tomorrow workers will remove the red seats people have kissed in, slept in, proposed beside, and hidden inside when the summer heat became unbearable. Only eleven customers came to the final screening. None of them knew it was the end. They complained that the popcorn was cold and left before the credits finished. I stayed in the projection room until the reel stopped turning. My wife and I met here when she came to see the same film three nights in a row because she liked the actor. She died twelve years ago, but sometimes, when the house lights dim, I still imagine her sitting in row G with her coat folded across her knees. Before leaving tonight, I cut one small square from the old screen and put it inside my wallet. Tomorrow, someone will call this place empty. They will be wrong. It is full of every life that ever sat in the dark and believed, for two hours, that another ending was possible.