What I Came For

I went to print a form.

Ninety cents, two pages,

in and out.

I ended up in the 800s.

The stacks just rerouted me.

Some pull older than I can account for.

The form was already in my bag.

There was a kid on the floor

with her back against a shelf,

feet flat on the linoleum,

reading a paperback with the cover bent all the way back,

completely at ease.

I used to sit like that.

Not the book, exactly —

the floor of it.

The whole building as a kind of permission

I didn't have to ask for.

The fluorescent tube above the periodicals

was doing the same slow flicker

it did when I was nine.

I know it can't be the same bulb.

I know.

I didn't check anything out.

Went to the desk,

waited behind someone,

got my two pages,

paid — I'd miscounted, it was more —

and left.

The form still needs to be faxed.

I haven't sent it.