An act of recovery, they say in curatorial tones, archiving the mundane, rooting through the baggage of inmates deposited long ago for safekeeping, anonymity the new caché, a hunger for narrative free of consequence. Within a small strapped case, the single shirt, carefully starched, his winter drawers and the geography text once memorized to win a ribbon that Mother tacked to the parlor wall, boasting of her genius boy. Before he began drooling in church, tweezing the hairs from his forearm, singing to himself as he walked to the foundry after a breakfast of oats and beans and splashing his cheeks with her cologne. Before he began seeing things that weren't there and begged her for stories in Polish to soothe his fears, his grief for uncles buried in an old world and the clumsy name no one in town could pronounce. He lived out the balance of his days in gray pants and black shoes, took meals at six, twelve and six and dug graves when told to. His single pleasure, if you dare call it that, the school book, a quiet, solid thing upon his lap each afternoon, his fingers as smooth as the pages, patting it, stroking it, to calm the seas roiling between its covers.
