Hove Library

“Now you are awake,

it is still a dream.

Let me ask you,

who knows the difference?”

That’s what it said.

In pencil.

Folded once.

Left by my head

in Hove Library.

I don’t know who wrote it.

I don’t know what they meant.

Maybe they didn’t mean anything.

Maybe they were bored.

Maybe they worked there.

Maybe they never existed.

They’re closing the libraries now.

Or reducing the hours.

Which is what you say

when you want to kill something

slowly enough to call it care.

I was 14.

Autumn.

Or maybe spring.

Maybe I’ve remembered the wrong season.

Maybe that’s the dream.

It was warm.

I’d fallen asleep,

head on my arm,

over my homework

or what I thought was homework.

And when I woke up,

the note was there.

“Now you are awake…”

And I thought

well, that’s odd.

That’s really odd.

Because how did they know

I was going to wake up?

And why that sentence?

And why me?

The note.

A riddle.

Like someone had seen me dreaming

and decided to test how deep it went.

I looked around.

The library was empty.

But it wasn’t empty empty.

It was that kind of empty

that still holds the shape of people.

Like when you move a chair

and you can still see

where it was.

I kept the note.

Put it inside Ted Hughs' Crow.

Because at 14 that’s what you do, isn’t it.

You turn coincidence into meaning.

You give the universe a plot twist.

Years later, it vanished.

The book. The note.

Taken by an inconsequential boyfriend...

Some bad songs...

The usual...

And now, when I hear they’re closing the libraries,

I think, good.

Good.

Let’s close them all.

Let’s have no warm rooms left.

Nowhere quiet to sit.

Let’s finish it properly.

Because you can’t half-kill a silence.

You either keep it,

or you fill it.

People say it doesn’t matter.

All the books are online.

But they aren’t.

Not really.

You can upload pages.

You can’t upload the pause between them.

Or that particular kind of loneliness that feels communal.

Sometimes I think the person who wrote the note was the library itself.

Trying to warn me.

That one day I’d wake up,

and it would all be gone,

and I’d still be dreaming.

And maybe I am.

Maybe we all are.

Maybe the libraries are already gone.

Maybe I’m just remembering them wrong.

#saveourlibraries