The library at 7pm on a Friday feels like a secret

I was there today, just walking in after the last bus of the day. The lights were low, the air still. One woman in the history section was reading aloud to herself, not quite whispering. I didn’t know what she was saying—some old treaty or a letter from a soldier—but it made the whole place feel like a held breath. I sat by the window for twenty minutes, watching the streetlights come on one by one. It’s the kind of quiet that doesn’t ask permission to exist.