The City Library

Outside the library of my childhood,

there was a concrete wall, a bas-relief

part bird, part alphabet of curves.

It had an eye that watched you,

and a beak of a smile.

Inside, escalators wheezed

and moaned you from floor to floor

inside the husk of a huge atrium.

As you rose, you saw a three-storey

mural, pea green and brown and orange

and bone-white like a skeleton.

In rows of pinewood drawers, the card catalog

bared its complicated teeth at you.

There was a quiet, like holding your breath,

and every word said out loud

was whispered like a secret.

Its scent was pulp and glue,

old and new.

What I mean to say is this:

there was something not real

about the place we kept our books,

my neighbors, a city of strangers, and me.

When I held them in my arms,

the books crackled.