I was reading a stolen copy of the New Yorker at a friend’s parents’ on the south side. Joyce Carol Oates had written a beautiful reflection on the last week of her husband’s life. I have not read her writing before but was really struck. She used the phrase “pools of memory.” She was writing specifically of hospital waiting rooms, but the expression pertains to those spaces which accumulate emotional residue. When I think of places where i have left puddles of memory, my mind flashes to my house in Majuro. I picture the bare and cracked concrete floor, dusty louvers, and rickety, crumbling furniture. As I put myself back in that place and remember the details, all these memories flood back at once: happy, sad, crushing. I remember small island kids like Alpert and Kilmej and Nako drawing pictures at our kitchen table. Quiet Saturday mornings, reading and drinking coffee while everyone else was asleep. I remember toward the end, when things were falling apart. The layers accrued. Pools of memory, so deep.