Dear Liberty Library,

I may be a bad book borrower

I have not returned my books

In nearly 5 years.

I still have almost all 32 of them

They are mostly in ok condition.

Some got damp and curled

from when our storage unit flooded.

A few of them have an origin un-known, red-orange, sticky stain on their covers.

No less than 5 of them are in perfect condition,

aside from the erratically missing pages, here and there, that my teenager

had tore out for her diorama project in the 5th grade.

The book of the vintage art deco screen printed posters

from the 1920’s

that book,

that book was only slightly scribbled on

with black and green crayons

by my 3 year old niece, just last week.

No more than 8 books were faintly nibbled by Wally, our escape artist gerbil.

Not nearly as many were gnawed on by Taxi, our Spaniel-Akita mutt from the humane

society in Greenfield.

One book might be entirely glued shut, forever, by honey and oatmeal.

The spine on a few books may be so fractured that they will never close again.

Only 30 of the 32 books were dog eared as we read and never read them.

About 3 to 7 were borrowed out and never returned to us,

but the borrowers, all the ones we could remember, have now promised to return

them to your downtown location, at some point

your 3rd print 1950’s copy of the “Adventures of Huckleberry Fin” was pawned in

Rochester,

but we only got 7 dollars for it.

We bought Moon Pies and two fountain pops

at the Loaf-N-Jug on our way out of town.

As for the oversized picture book about woodland fairies and gnomes…

unfortunately, my Baptist, born again grandma decided she needed to burn it in our

backyard before we all burned in hell for having it around us, even though I never got

around to really looking at it.

As the book burned, the flames turned

an electric color of turquoise and bright pink,

my grandma said that was a sign from god

that he was purifying the devil spirit living in the book.

One book I just can’t give it back to you…

it was just a silly little pop-up children’s book about some

fish in a pond, or toad on a lily

something like that,

anyways,

it’s the only thing keeping our kitchen table from wobbling around

spilling milk, splashing tomato soup.

It really is the most perfect thickness

and it hasn’t worn out as fast as a book of matches always does,

but, I guess it has been 5 years, though I hate to remind you of that.

Anyways,

all apologies

for the imperfect return of your books.

We have moved to Wood Lake

and don’t imagine we will ever be patrons to your library again.

But I still wanted to return the books.

I believe in karma and all that, so I knew I had to do the right thing.

The shipping cost was fairly minimal

considering I sent you

nearly all of the 32 books

in mostly ok condition

Signed,

Seeya Sucker