Aleksei
The library is hers now. She doesn’t know it yet, but every book, every lamp, every chair in this room already belongs to her.
I watch from the shadows as she slips in, barefoot, her nightdress floating around her thighs. She drifts between shelves, fingertips trailing over the spines, hair loose down her back. She thinks she’s quiet, but I hear her breathing, the soft catch in her throat when she pauses at the shelves of poetry I had flown in for her.