Cartography of Rain in a Closed Library

At dusk the library inhales the storm, gutters drum like fingers on a violin case, maps on the wall loosen their countries, and the windows taste of iron and pine.

Between shelves, the air turns page by page, a wet wind lifting corners of forgotten atlases; every ocean darkens to ink again, every border runs, a blue vein in the paper.

I light no lamp. Thunder does the reading, brief white syllables across titles and dust. Somewhere a roof-beam answers in cedar, and the whole room hums like a throat before song.

By midnight, even silence has a tide. The books swell softly, drinking what the sky spills. When morning opens the door, it will find an archipelago of stories, newly made.