Night Book Drop

The book drop yawns like a small metal cave, its mouth warm with the paper breath of return. Streetlight pollen drifts across the slot, and my hands feel the weight of borrowed weather.

Inside, pages carry the hush of long trains; inked rivers bend past towns I never saw. A stamp thuds—an old moon sealing the tide— while the cart wheels whisper their tin wheelsong.

On the map spread over the reading table, arrows curl like birds practicing the wind. Someone has circled a lake in blue pencil, a ring for a place to land without a home.

Out back, the night stacks itself in rows, black spines, a glossary of closed doors. I leave, and the city keeps shelving its stars, each one a word I am still learning to carry.