After the Last Checkout

At closing, the library exhales through the vents, rain combing the skylight with silver teeth, barcodes sleep like tiny harbors on each spine, and the carpet keeps a warm map of vanished shoes.

In aisle nine, atlases loosen their folded weather, rivers uncurl, blue as veins in a wrist, a lighthouse blinks from a page no one opened, guiding dust motes home through the sodium glow.

The return slot coughs up a moon of paperbacks; their covers taste of buses, kitchens, hospital dawns, every margin a soft argument with time, every receipt a sparrow pinned to the wind.

When the doors lock, silence is not empty but tuned: a cello string held under the tongue of night. I leave with no book, only that hum in my coat, as if the city itself had learned to read aloud.