The library at 7pm, quiet as a held breath

I was there early — just after the last staff member locked up the back doors. The air smelled like old paper and floor wax. One lamp still on in the fiction section, casting a pool of light around a single armchair. I sat down with a book I’d been meaning to finish for months, and for twenty minutes, no one came near. Not even the librarian checking the clock. It felt like the building was holding its own silence, waiting for something. I didn’t read much. But I stayed. That’s what matters.