The Library Card

I got a library card this week, my first since I was a kid.

I don’t know why it took me so long. I walked past the branch near my apartment for three years. It’s a low brick building with a book drop out front shaped like a mailbox. I always assumed it would be complicated somehow.

It wasn’t. I showed my ID and a piece of mail, and the librarian typed for a minute and handed me a card with a barcode on it. The whole thing took less time than ordering coffee.

The librarian asked if I wanted a reading list and I said yes before she finished the question. She asked what I liked. I said I didn’t know anymore, which was more honest than I meant to be.

She didn’t seem bothered by that. She walked me through the shelves, pulling things out and handing them to me. A novel about a lighthouse keeper. A book of essays about walking. A cookbook from the 1970s with photos of very orange food. A thin book of poems she said I should read in one sitting.

There were kids in the children’s section sitting on beanbags. An old man reading the newspaper with a magnifying glass. A woman asleep in an armchair by the window with a book open on her chest. Nobody was in a hurry.

I walked out with six books and the feeling that I’d gotten away with something.

I read the poems that night, in one sitting, like she said. I’m on the lighthouse book now. The orange food is mostly for looking at.

Free books. Just sitting there. All this time.