Fluorescents humming. Flat-price stickers. Shelves in clean rows like someone squared them with a spirit level. I don’t go here for romance. I go because

I found the shelves in a Valencia junk shop between a headless mannequin and an exercise bike. Pine, old varnish, three bowed shelves. I measured,

It turned up in a backstreet shop in Valencia that still smells faintly of floor cleaner and last century. Paperbacks along the skirting, hardbacks shoulder

I got there early enough to see tarps come off tables like someone lifting lids. The first heat was already climbing the cobbles and a

The library began as a cardboard box by the bed because I didn’t have shelves yet and because I was pretending this wasn’t becoming a