Quiet Hours

The heat in here is free and it smells like glue.

I’m sitting in the back by the oversized books

where the light doesn't reach the carpet.

I’m tracing the plastic crinkle of a cover

that hasn't been touched since nineteen-ninety-two.

Nobody asks why I’ve been here for three hours

without turning a single page.

They just assume I’m deep in the history

of a war that ended before I was born,

instead of just hiding from the one in my kitchen.