"The Sunset Branch"

"The seagreen due-date slip slithers frommy pile of papers and unread books.When do we find ourselves, and where?DO NOT REMOVE THIS CARDIt must hail from the books I stolein the bloody days of Saigon and Jackson State. We work to separate dread from dread.In life, of life, joy from perilous joy.TEN CENTS CHARGED IF LOSTBooks mark us for good but don't always help.Facts, moments, cravings, and lossstorm our days. The aimless slip overlies"

"the films that played the long-gone Surf,far out the Avenues, farther out the Sunsetthan my library. In row eight, next to me,Mifune sulks and grunts. Outside, the fogstraps street lamps and the Surf's marquee.But what book was it? What did it do to me?"

"I must have broken its spine there,underlined what seemed momentous then.Books replaced childhood's confessionals,our shuttered, whispery theatres of sin.Nostalgia sickens but delivers us.We want to be sick, delivered from the moment, our only real home. I stoleto keep books close, like Hardy's poems,Down their carved names the rain-drop ploughs.Be keen. Beware unwanted visitors.Remembrance takes fools hostage. Keep closewhat mystifies and justifies. I still desire stolen secreciesand am hostage to what maybe never was.Reveries and revenants. A memory,this memory, burns the moment, this timeof mine that doesn't belong to me but is me.The rapturous due date's long overdue."

A seagreen due-date slip surfaces from a pile of unread books and prompts questions of where and when the self is found. The slip connects to books stolen during violent historical moments and to efforts to separate dread from joy. Books act as replacement confessionals that both mark and fail the narrator, producing nostalgia that sickens yet delivers. Cinemas, damp carved names, broken spines, and private underlinings evoke theft, secrecy, and justification. Memory contains reveries and revenants, and the overdue due date becomes a symbol of a delayed reckoning with identity.

Read at The New Yorker