Samantha MacNaughton is a Scottish-American writer, born and raised in England. She is currently based in Edinburgh, where she is studying Classics and English Language. At the moment, she is working on an ever-expanding poetry project about women in mythology.

“This poem is deeply inspired by my memories of the public library I often visited when I was younger. I am so grateful that my poem spoke to the judges just as the books in that library once spoke to me!”

Ode to the Public Library

Not even thirty paces from the graffiti’d bus stop

that lurks like a hanger-on standing before

the Sainsbury’s, big as a temple, that dreams out

the triple-choc-chip cookies you yearn for,

rain spattering the glass above your head,

and you step inside where you left your childhood:

It’s still just as quiet as it was in your childhood,

the computers juddery and half-about to stop,

the shelves creaking. It lingers in your head:

all the places you’ve sat, wondering, before,

when you came and didn’t know what it was for,

only that the world was too loud and you had to get out.

So, you’re standing in your own footsteps. CHECK-OUT

HERE, reads the sign, crumpled in childhood

by boys too young to be unkind, and girls for

whom love meant your parents’ car didn’t stop

for you, and you knew all this long before,

and now you’re older but it stayed in your head,

all that you learned when trapped in your head,

your Year-Six classmates behind glass, calling out,

but you’d never listened to any of them before—

except sometimes in your rolled-together childhood,

when you tangled your lives and wouldn’t stop

dancing, not even for your parents—now what was it for?

You don’t know. You don’t remember what it was for.

You don’t remember their names. In your head,

even their faces are fading. Tell time to stop,

just for a moment. You were here, when you fell out

with your best friend and cried, fat wet tears of childhood;

you were here when you fell in love. You were here before.

And so, you trail your fingers over shelves you knew before,

Recall where each book goes. Ask again for

another Rainbow Magic book. Name it after your childhood

best friend. Write it in jagged cursive inside your head.

Don’t leave your friends alone. Scream something out

that no-one knows. Spray-paint a heart onto the bus stop.

My childhood is where I left it before,

lying between where magic stops & leaves for

a dead-end job to get ahead. The rain is here. Let it out.