Librarian’s note: the smell of old paper, the weight of leather-bound spines, the hush that falls like a heavy blanket… it’s the only place I feel truly safe. My mind keeps drifting, though. Not to the plots in these books, but to the feeling of rope being wound slowly, deliberately, around my wrists. To the fantasy of being pressed against a stack of forgotten histories, my skirt pushed up, a hand over my mouth to keep me quiet while I’m taken from behind. It’s a different kind of silence here. One that screams with everything I can’t say out loud. Maybe I should find a book on knots.