The Memory Police

by Yōko Ogawa

If it goes on like this and we can’t compensate for the things that get lost, the island will soon be nothing but absences and holes, and when it’s completely hollowed out, we’ll all disappear without a trace. Don’t you ever feel that way?”

When I was a child, the whole place seemed…how can I put this?…a lot fuller, a lot more real. But as things got thinner, more full of holes, our hearts got thinner, too, diluted somehow. I suppose that kept things in balance. And even when that balance begins to collapse, something remains.

When I stand here in front of the cabinet, my heart feels like a silkworm slumbering in its cocoon.” “But that’s just the way it is—everyone feels that way about the things that have disappeared.”

“I remember hearing a saying long ago: ‘Men who start by burning books end by burning other men,’