My Bookish World: A Poem

Image credit: amnesty.org.uk

My Bookish World

This used to be a library, once.
Yes, here.
Amidst the rubble and bones
Which reek of dead men
Over the ruins of a nation, dying of the curious ailment, war,
An old house once stood towering and tall.
Filled to the brim with stories
Smelling of coffee and newfound love,
Between whose shelves, my childhood waits for me.
Even today.
There used to be a library, here.
Where I would spend hours on end
Escaping.
The musty smell of old books
From peacetime days, would waft up to my hungry nostrils
Enticing me.
To push open the hardwood door and lose myself
In the nooks and crannies of my bookish world.
My father used to say,
‘Read and you'll know why.’
A five year old me would stand in his study, homework in hand,
Unanswered questions threatening to flood that eight by six room of his.
He would never answer.
Twenty years later, as I sit typing, here, in the fourteen by twelve office
Of my sprawling Upper East Side apartment,
I am glad he didn't.
It is strange how words can fill shelves, rooms, hearts
It is strange how I fell in love with that old library down the street
It is strange how books filled up the silence that voices didn't
And slowly, bit by bit, boy wizards and hobbits filled up the void
That parents left gaping and empty.
Magic rings would slip in and out of my fingers and glass slippers
Would take me to the Never Never lands of my mind.
Little girls from the Alps and princesses with magic carpets would
Take my hand and lead me to the unchartered islands of my soul.
Where the land has not been razed by missile bombs, yet
And babies have not been ripped from their mothers' arms.
Where gunshots every two blocks away would not wake up little children
And sullen young boys would not patrol the streets, Kalashnikovs slung across their shoulders.
No. Not yet.
Imagine yourself, at thirteen, your nose deep in a dusty tome you've just pulled down from the shelf.

Imagine yourself unaware of the world around you,
Living in a book, a make believe fantasy.
Imagine yourself, at peace.
Imagine yourself happy.
That's when the bomb blasts come in.
The war started on a hot summer afternoon In mid July as I sat reading in the library.
We ran for cover as books came tumbling down the walls, an avalanche of words.
The world around me was crumbling,
And all I could do, was escape.
Not into my make believe fantasy
But into reality, this time.
They burned the libraries, I heard, as I sat in my father's small convenience store in downtown Queens, New York.

Here, in America, you can't just walk into a library and start reading, my friend from University tells me.

You have to pay for everything here.
The shop bell rings and a customer walks in.
Books don't tell you how to run from bullets.
Books don't tell you how to leave everything behind and escape in the cover of the night
Books don't tell you how to stay still, stifling your anger as the TSA agent pulls you aside.
Books don't tell you how not to lose it when the white man in a MAGA shirt tells you
To go back where you came from.
Books don't tell you how to preserve your culture even as you walk farther away from your identity everyday.

But books can fill up the silence that voices don't
Books can bring back snapshots of a past that you left behind
A lifetime ago.
Books can take you back where you came from, twenty years later
To your home.
To an old house, a library
That once stood towering and tall
Filled to the brim with stories
Smelling of coffee and newfound love
Between whose shelves, your childhood waits for you
Even today.