"The book is divided into three sections—"Residue," "Geezer," and "Lockdown"—and an air of finality hangs over each. Implicit in "Residue" is the idea of remnants, leftovers, discarded memories, fingerprint smudges on glass; we are looking at fragments of the past. A 15-line poem about erasers begins this section, serving as a statement of purpose for the rest of the collection: "I'd like to replay / all those moments in my life," Padgett writes of what has disappeared beneath the eraser's touch,"
"Dust, that most fundamental component of what makes up life in so many cosmologies—"From dust you came, and to dust you shall return" goes the line from Genesis—is here imagined via the ordinary pink rubber of a pencil eraser. It is an image that, in its meaning, contradicts its placement at the beginning of the book, where nothing much has happened yet—where nothing yet seems to be needing correction."
Mortality functions as an ever-present force, linked intimately to artistic practice and everyday objects. Wry memento mori tone alternates between humor and tenderness, softening stark reflections on aging and loss. Recurring images—pink pencil erasers, dust, fingerprints—act as metaphors for erasure, remnants, and the residue of lived experience. Fragmentary scenes evoke memory as a series of remnants and corrections, suggesting life may resemble a first draft marked by edits. An undercurrent of finality pervades the lines, while a gentle register permits playful, humane engagement with the fading of analogue culture and the approach of personal endings.
Read at The Nation
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