Suzumiya

Half-Past Three or Four O'clock

A small journal with sinuous covers carved from an ancient ebony tree remains my father’s final gift to me. The book is marvelous, the purest black I have ever seen. A gorgeous spiral snakes through both covers, like a suture, binding it together. Beneath them are layers of gold-leafed paper which, like brittle Winter leaves, crinkle when touched. They feel like old skin, and calluses. He gave me this nearly two decades ago when, after being missing for weeks, he appeared in a strange manner at my bedside. Nobody knew where he went and, truthfully, I did not miss him. Yet, there he was, middle of the night, unbidden and lingering in my bedroom doorway. He smelled awful. I remember his bag, a raggedy old thing, and how he reached into its mouth to remove a book whose appearance was antithetical to his own. He asked me to write in it.