The In-Between

The space heater plugged into the wall behind S’s bookshelf melts the socket. I try to yank it out, but the plastic has gone to putty around the prongs. It isn’t until later as I lie in bed that I let the scenario play out in my head: maybe a single spark, a single spark landing on the spine of the 1953 paperback reprint of Thorstein Veblen’s Theory of the Leisure Class—a book I’ll never read, a book that sits closest to the outlet, that’s flanked on either side by other books I’ll never read—a single spark and within seconds: the whole library up in flames. Lying there, I let myself wonder if I’d like it to burn.