I dreamt the prison was a library

I was walking through rows of silent shelves, each one labelled with a name I knew—some from my shift, others from years before. The books weren’t bound in leather or paper, but in skin, stitched with thread that looked like old barbed wire. I pulled one out—no title, just a voice inside it, saying something I’d heard once, in a cell at 3 a.m., when someone whispered, 'I didn’t mean to hurt anyone.' The air smelled like rust and wet concrete. I kept walking, not knowing if I was searching for an answer or just trying to remember why I used to stand still at the end of the corridor.