The store smelled of new books.
As an excited girl of twelve or thirteen,
I made my way to the Nancy Drew section,
already in the convertible with Nancy and her friends.
Forty years later,
in a toilet stall at the YMCA,
The tissue’s scent takes me back to a time
when I couldn’t wait to get home and read.
***
In a recent post at https://alice13wordwalk.wordpress.com/2015/11/04/a-cornucopia-of-thanks-for-libraries/ , Alice Massa, a retired teacher and poet, shares her memories of the libraries she frequented over the years. Like me, she loved to sniff a book’s interior as a child. That reminded me of the above poem which I wrote years ago after noticing that a piece of toilet paper at the YMCA smelled just like the inside of a new Nancy Drew book. To hear me read this poem, go to https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/15213189/scent%20story.mp3 .
***
How to Build a Better Mousetrap: Recollections and Reflections of a Family Caregiver
That’s Life: New and Selected Poems
My Corner 