The Library, Lyn Thompson Lemaire

We called the topmost room 

of our first family home

The Library, as in:

“I’m in The Library!”

(as I’d absently shout

when finally summoned).

Every house we lived in

had one, a sacred space 

where thick volumes lined dark 

wooden shelves (my favorite 

place to hide, left alone 

to my own devices).

In the one on the top 

floor of the bright brick red 

cottage on the hillside,

I would lie on my back

splayed out in the middle 

of the oriental  

rug, books cracked, splayed open 

around me, abandoned, 

light streaming through windows 

looking up towards blue skies,

over the turning leaves 

that hid the gas station

by the Dairy Queen down

across the street, behind

the trees, where I would go

later on, on my own

(always a vanilla 

cone dipped in chocolate).

There, in the library, 

I would lie on my back 

on the oriental 

rug staring at the worn 

white ceiling and I would

lie to my parents when 

they called from the kitchen 

that dinner was ready —

“Coming!” — I’d say, then roll 

over, back to turning 

through Gray’s Anatomy, 

Encyclopedia

Britannica, yellowed

Nat Geo atlases,

and Japanese lessons,

found lying about on

the mahogany desk. 

In the library, truths

could be found, answers 

to inchoate questions,

windows onto a world

outside the brick red walls

of my silent childhood.

Growing older, bolder,

I would hoist myself up

to the sill, swing one leg

then two through the window 

and sit out on the roof —

my private perch, just high 

enough to glimpse what lies

beyond.