I Remember

“The Malaysian government disclosed tonight it has turned away boats carrying an estimated
40,000 people already this year. Several of those boats are known to have sunk at sea.”
 –The Washington Post, June 19, 1979

A professor in college, animated, posits modern ancestral worship within the context of the double subjunctive. The “as if,” the “as though,” to denote the unreal imagined. This ritual of ancestral veneration is then not an act of faith but instead of metaphor and connection. Many of the modern-day place offerings upon the altar as if their ancestors can still taste the sweetness of once beloved plums, perfectly ripe. As if the breath of incense can call a ghost home. I guess that’s all any of this really is—as if. As if the dead can be written back to life. As if you never had to leave. As if none of it had to happen. I can still save you from the past.