Thereās a cat that lives in the alley behind my building. I think she used to belong to someone because she wears a thin red collar, faded to pink in the sun. Sometimes she follows me when I take the trash out. Iāve tried to give her a name but nothing has stuck.
This morning she brought me something: a bird, not dead, only stunned. She dropped it at my feet and looked at me as if to say do something about this. I knelt down and picked it up gently. It blinked at me once, completely still in my hands. Then it died.
I donāt know what to do with gifts like that.
In the afternoon I sat on the windowsill with a cup of tea and reread an old letter someone once wrote me. The handwriting was round and a little messy, all the lines crowding together near the end like they were hurrying to say more. She told me I reminded her of a moth. I think she meant it as a compliment.
š
1/26/2025
I dreamed I was walking through an orchard at dusk. The trees were heavy with fruit I didnāt recognize - pale green, shaped like teardrops. One had fallen and split on the path, its insides transparent and black. There was someone walking ahead of me. She didnāt turn around, she kept moving between the trees like she belonged to them.
When I woke up, my room was full of that same light. The kind that makes everything look a little unreal, like itās been painted over. Sometimes you wake up with the feeling that something important has happened, but thereās no evidence of it; only a mood.
I opened the sliding window to the balcony and sat on the wood floor. It smelled like rain, even though it hadnāt. Below, someone was watering something in the forgotten bed across the alley. A bird called out once and then was quiet again.
āļø
2/7/2025
I saw a girl on the train today who reminded me of someone I used to know.
Not in her face, more in the way she stood. One hand resting lightly on the overhead strap, the other curled around a paperback. Her uniform blazer was too big for her, and her hair was tucked behind one ear like she wasnāt used to having it long.
There was a trace of perfume in the air, something citrus and bitter. My chest softened, that automatic brightness when you catch a familiar scent of someone you love. For half a second my body turned toward it, looking for her. Then the recognition landed. Not her. Never her. The train lurched and I was back, standing too close to a stranger, the air suddenly only air.
She didnāt look up from her book the whole time. The train rocked and hissed through the tunnels. I was standing close enough to see the pages; soft with use, underlined all over with pale blue pencil. Something about that wrecked me a little. May used to mark pages like that. She said pencil was gentler. āInk assumes itās right, but photo blue leaves room to change your mind.ā
But for a second I felt nineteen again, my skin warm from holding her pale hand. The moth letter tucked in my journal like a pressed flower. A girl reading on the train.
Iād borrowed a cardigan that day, something pink and far too thin, and she kept fussing with the sleeves like she wanted to roll them for me but couldnāt find an excuse. I didnāt tell her I was scared, only disappeared into the night. I woke up again the next morning as from a dream.Ā All that time since, like watching power wires slip by the window. So much air between them. So much empty space.
I got off at my stop and the girl stayed on. I watched the train slide away into the dark.
š£
2/12/2025
I washed my hair today and it actually dried kind of nice. Thatās probably the only thing I can say with certainty.
I bought yogurt from the convenience store, but got the wrong kind. The kind with the bitter jelly on top. I ate it anyway. I didnāt even mind. I think thatās how they get you.
A girl in the library dropped a pencil and muttered something under her breath that made two other students laugh. I wish Iād heard it. Thereās something about that kind of laughter; quiet and conspiratorial. Like theyāre all part of a world I havenāt been invited to yet.
I worked through two proofs at my desk and gave up on a third. The third one wasnāt even hard. I couldnāt make my brain move right.
Some days are like that. Not bad. Misaligned.
I walked home without my headphones on. I didnāt notice until halfway back, but I didnāt put them in. I just kept walking.
Today is not a sad day.
š§”
3/3/2025
I was sitting outside the student union, at one of those low concrete tables with faded umbrellas and cigarette burns carved into the corners. It was nothing like the sanitized campuses back home. A group of high schoolers on a tour wandered past, all matching windbreakers and too-loud voices. I looked down at my coffee until they passed.
It was cold in the shade, but the sun was out. That strange between-season weather with bare branches, an almost warm breeze. The planty smell of new grass. I closed my eyes to focus on the ambient sounds of people walking by, and seagulls.
And then it was that day. Sitting alone outside afterwards, the overwhelming finality.
And then my eyes opened, and it was back home in Dana Point.
The concrete was gone, replaced by fine sand dewy from the morning fog. The sudden warmth radiating on my shoulders, the distant hush of waves folding in, it was unmistakable. I was on the beach, the long stairs behind me, the umbrella planted deep and canted slightly against the wind. That umbrella; bright orange, with one rib always clicking a little in the breeze. My dad had carried it down while my mom brought the little light blue cooler and a paperback mystery novel, already creased at the spine. My siblings hadnāt come. I donāt remember why. Probably something dumb and teenage.
I lay there looking up at the umbrella, half-lost in the pattern of the fabric, the crash of the waves, the smell of salt and sunscreen. Everything felt impossibly wide, unmistakably present.
Itās the last time I remember sitting on the beach with both of them. They loved me so much. But I was never sure if they could handle the real me, if they could handle May. I never wanted to take the chance.
I mustāve closed my eyes again, because the sun was back at a different angle, and I was back at school. A vending machine clunked somewhere behind me. The students were gone.
It is a beautiful day. It really is. Nothing has changed. The breeze carries an icy hint of spring, sharp and green/ That is the cruelty of it; nothing is sad. It is a normal day, like every day before and after.
The sun shines anyway. I watch it for a while. Then I get up and throw my coffee away. Thatās all I can do today.
š
3/13/2025
I went for a walk tonight, I am not sure why.
Back home I would have been very careful about this, in LA the night felt claustrophobic, smaller. I had already seen what every shadow had to offer, dirty and feral. Some places, those places, never alone, never after dark.
Tokyo feels different, dim high cri white ambiently permeating a web of clean main streets. Or I do not care anymore. What happens, happens.
The vending machines glow like little bubbles, each with its own pool of color. Blueish white, refreshing. Another light pink of neutral light mixed with red, like love. That sickly green one makes me feel underwater.
Sometimes people inhabit the spaces created by light. A man smoking and scrolling on his phone. Two girls whispering with their bodies leaned to bear a secret. A guy in a suit holding a coffee like it might warm more than his hands. But usually there is nobody at all, just the glow. Ready for somebody to walk in.
I think of my circle of like in LA. That buzzing sodium streetlamp in front of my house in Hermosa. The achromatic orange glow, like a fog. Eerie, but bold too. Carving out its own personality in the dark; my personality.
Did someone wash the marker tag I left on the stairs before I moved out? A crescent moon with light beams pointing straight down. I drew it with one of those big art store sharpies, the kind with a strong solvent smell and ink sloshing inside. The ones for crime. I used to carry one in my bag all the time when I was with May, sometimes I would draw a heart or star, or a funny monster face. Before all of this. Before, with her soft photo blue pencil and my own belief in permanence. When I still left a mark.
I passed one machine that was broken, its screen flickering; the drinks inside turned upside down or sideways. The ground in front of it was wet with something. It smelled acrid and sticky like sugar. Like the crisp snap when something lifts off adhesive. I did not stop.
It does not feel dangerous, not really.
I used to think I wanted to belong somewhere. Now I think I want to be left alone by something that understands how to do it gently. To walk into a little fold of shadow and disappear forever.
The shadows here seem to know how to do that.
Anyways, I walked for about three hours and bought a tea I did not drink. I let it get warm in my pocket and put it in the fridge at home.
šæ
3/16/2025
The apartment windows are too small for real greenery, only plants evolved for the dim light of the jungle floor.
Three pots crowd the kitchen sill: a basil that slouches toward the light, a jade clipping I pinched from a roadside planter that has not rooted, and a lone maranta leaf rescued from the discount bin. They keep trying, even in the wrong conditions. Maybe that is what living things do. All of them crooked, edges yellowing; but alive.
In the bedroom a ficus keeps separate counsel, thriving in shade, its bitter milky sap like blood, a pulseless rhythm too slow to measure. A sentry that stands watch while I sleep, sharing the quiet weight of the room.
I water them on Sundays. No schedule, just the kettleās rising steam when it finishes, the soft click that pulls me back.
Blink. Coastal light pouring through tall windows; cereal milk cold on my tongue; cartoons murmuring low while the rest of the house slept. Everyone home, the day soft around the edges. Sunday meant something then.
Blink.
I touch the soil, cool and forgiving, then pour until it darkens.
Sometimes I worry the basil can smell the instant noodles I make a few steps away. The spice packetās peppery steam is so strong it makes my breath catch. Is that why it droops? Maybe it misses the Ligurian sun and clean Mediterranean air. Wrong continent, wrong life.
Still, the leaves uncurl every morning when I tug the curtain back. Presenting their bright faces to the glass the way I do for everyone else; while the ficus, and the quiet shadow in my chest, keep growing under the slow calculus of light against gravity and dark.
Keeping them alive feels like proof Iām here. Something rooting, even if only in potting mix from the 100āyen shop.
They wake up every morning, even if they donāt know why. I tell myself that counts for something.
š
21 March 2025
The cat is back this morning, no gifts. She sits on the balconyās edge, tail tracing slow, dustless arcs across the cool damp concrete (cement worn away so the aggregate pebbles rise like tiny mountains, in a matrix of mossy depressions) and watches me through the glass. Did she remember the bird?
I still think about how it felt in my hands; that impossible lightness, the way its heartbeat fluttered against my palm before stopping. One moment alive. The next, not. No transition. Just absence.
May used to leave her tea cups half-finished around our apartment. Iād find them days later, the surface sheened with that strange, matte rainbow skin; iridescent, like oil on a puddle. I once looked it up: polyphenols meeting the kettleās mineral salts, leaving a thin rainbow film. Even her tea couldnāt stay simple. She collected mugs with tiny chips or flaws. She said they had character. I kept washing them long after she left, as if the ritual might summon her back.
That winter we shared in Hermosa, we barely ran the heater. The windows were always cracked barely open, and Pacific air slid in as a cool laminar stream. We would sleep tangled together, her cold feet pressed against my calves, our warmth convecting through our pile of quilts. I would let my hands wander like I used to alone in bed. I would wake to find her watching me, my hair haphazard across my pillow; still, quiet, like she was afraid to move and break the moment. My roommate.
āIām memorizing you,ā she said once, when I asked why.
I didnāt know then that we were both trying to imprint ourselves on the world, to prove we were real. Her photoāblue notes, my crescent moons on concrete; proof weād been there. Evidence isnāt a future, though; it only marks where something stopped.
We might have outgrown each other anyway; two young girls who loved each other once. But I did not let it end that way. I ended it to make other people comfortable. And I think there is a difference, cosmically. I think what we couldāve been was a version of me I never got to grow into. Not just losing her. Losing the way she made me real.
I didnāt kill it, not alone. But I didnāt save it either. I didnāt even try. I didnāt risk the conversation, didnāt give them the chance to reject me. I emptied a part of myself and called it selfāpreservation. I threw out a life to make space for theirs.
Outside, the cat stretches and yawns. She watches me through the glass with unblinking eyes that understand everything and expect nothing. Was the bird a gift or a test? Did I fail by letting it die, or by believing I could have saved it?
The sun shifts, casting shadows across the balcony floor. The cat turns to leave. She pauses, as if she might look back. But she doesnāt.
š¦
28 March 2025 (draft)
Tonight I went on the train for a bit, and then for a walk in a neighborhood I had never seen before. At the end of a street there was an impossibly tall grass covered dirt mound, almost surreal in the middle of Tokyo. I climbed to the top and found a weathered asphalt path. After some walking everything started to look the same, and my legs were burning; I found it infinite to my pedestrian pace. Concrete markers appear occasionally, every few hundred meters; the numbers decrease, maybe to zero.
To my right a panoramic view of Tokyo is densely illuminated with windows and puddles of street light. To the left, a sweeping channel of dark open space. The light pollution is bright off of clouds, and I could see the river in glowing fuzzy orange light; emptiness, scrubby wild grass, reeds, and sharp little sparkles on the flowing water. It smells mossy and sweet, dark green. It is eerily quiet now with only that dull baseline woosh of the city.
I found a set of steps up to the walkway and back down to the river. A small park perched anonymously at the top. I refilled my tea bottle from a fountain and drank. I learned from a sign that the Arakawa river was the rough river, and would historically overflow its banks causing massive damage to Tokyo, flooding entire city blocks. Shrines along the river are for flood protection, for mercy. Before this berm was built. This line between order and destruction.
Wind occasionally blows over from the river side, saturated with humidity. It is bitterly cold like a stream of ice water. Slowly I came to a golf course along the river with no lights on, it seems to be closed. It is nearly three in the morning.
And then I am walking through the scrub grass and effortlessly climb over the fence like I did at home (my hand on the corner post cap) at the country club when I was allowed to be there, but not at night. Maybe a chide from my husband later. More from being distant and reclusive, and him feeling excluded from the secret. I am not allowed to be here at all. Thinking this immobilized me for a moment, but we are already committed to the crime and I look up through cedar boughs at the sky. I am just a confused foreigner; or they will revoke my visa, maybe just ask me to feel ashamed; maybe I even would. Feel something.
It smells like cut grass mixed with pond and I walk for a bit down a gravel cart path. The day I told her I was getting married to him, she told me that I was being selfish. I said that she was an affair I could not see anymore. I called her dramatic and confusing. That was the first night I disappeared like this. Even then I hated the cruelty that my marriage made me perform.
I find a slight rough hill overlooking a long fairway, and sit with my back to a stand of trees, where nobody ever looks. I wish we would have stayed in touch, that I could have at least told her the truth, that I missed her and was not okay either. I remember the day she called and told me she was sick, how thin she had been last time I saw her. I visited later that afternoon; we talked all night like this again, finally. I told her I was sorry; she said that she forgave me, and that she was worried about me too. May was always like that with me.
In the weeks before our lease was up in Hermosa (how roommates break up) such a long time ago, when nothing actually worse could happen, we spent every day together. I didnāt know real pain yet. I was so young.
At the other end of the fairway I saw a golf cart driving and pointing a spotlight over the course. They are probably looking for a drunk, not a sad adult woman, and are looking in careless drunk places. I walk back through the trees and slip over the fence quietly again. Moving across the river bed is too obvious, so I lay down among the tall grass and look at the clouds, slowly swaying with the wind across the reeds. I donāt get up again until morning, when normal non-trespassers started walking, and the trains were running again.
I spent the night in the bushes, like in America, like the old times. I walked back to my apartment.
š
3 April 2025
I did laundry today.
Thereās a coināwash wedged between a shuttered bar and a flower shop that only opens on weekends. When Saturday comes, the place blooms with bruised carnations and damp stems. But today is Thursday, and the air smells like detergent layered over old newsprint; the free paper they leave out for bored patrons. Vertical columns of blocky kanji tied together with sparse katakana. Clean, but not sterile, something human still clinging to it. I should learn to read better. Everything glows white under old fluorescent lights. Comfortingly blank.
The dryers are strong and loud, but not in an overwhelming way. A low earthy hum, like a small part of a generational space station in an anonymous utility room; performing a small part of keeping me alive, forgotten to time, gently ignoring me. They run almost all the time. I watched the sleeves of my sweatshirt tumble in circles and feel my hair rise a little with static. And thought about nothing. It was nice.
I shrunk a shirt by accident. It was too big anyway, bought cheap during that first week in Japan when I didnāt know what I was doing. Now itās kind of cute. Boxy in the right way. Like something a girl in a 90s comingāofāage movie would wear to bed.
I folded everything at the big table in the corner. Someone left an origami crane made from pink paper with tiny stars on the back edge by the wall. Not crushed, not dead, forgotten.
The fabric warm and slightly too dry, carrying the scent of detergent and flat mineral tang of hot metal. I stood there for a long time after my clothes were done, breathing in the calmness. Basking in the plain light. The hum, the scent, the warmth. Nothing demanding, nothing wrong.
Itās not a good day or a bad one, fuzzy.
š¦
11 April 2025
I left before the city finished waking up. The streets around Waseda were thin with mist, empty except for a few bicycles riding by, the slight tick of their chains muffled by the moisture. I bought coffee from the shop I like, the one that still grinds actual beans, not the simulacra conjured in ad photography, freshly ground (at one time) in vending machine canisters. It was too hot for the skin between my thumb and forefinger when I carried it down the hill, but I did not mind.
Tokyo Station is too big. Even now it makes me dizzy; endless escalators, blinking signs, countless ways to miss your train. I followed the platform signs like a Turing machine zipping along its tape; questioning if the route was even computable, or if I would loop forever between signs.
Somehow I found the Sobu Line. It is not about missing home, not really; it is about May, about stopping long enough to let the memory of her final heartbeat catch up with me. Thirty-eight years of steady rhythm. Then silence. Today is about trying to remember her and breathe anyway. She would want me to.
At first the carriage window showed a hermetically sealed Tokyo, cool dry air circulating over my face. I looked into third story skyscraper windows passing the other way, almost their own stationary railcars. Every free space claimed for something; wires, signs, trains running above and below, the city using every dimension at once. Maybe unknown ones. Little by little, the density gave way: factories to empty warehouses, apartment blocks to quiet fields, concrete canals to marsh. Strange how quickly Tokyo just stops like a forgotten corner of the map, or a quiet story that is not finished yet.
Somewhere past Chiba, the air inside the car shifted, the light sharpened, salt pushed through the vents. I cracked the window. It smelled almost right, reminding me of driving back to San Diego with the gradual shift from desert scrub to crisp ocean humidity, imperceptible until overwhelming. Is change always like that? Nothing, nothing, then suddenly the air tastes different and you realize itās been happening for hours.
The beaches adjacent to Tokyo are crowded and close: sheltered in Tokyo Bay, long and roadālevel, fortified with neon umbrellas and portable coolers. Once, I even watched someone drag an upholstered ottoman across the sand. It took a lot of searching to find Ubara, a crescent facing the open Pacific Ocean. A thin sliver of sand edged by brutalist concrete on Google Maps.
I do not know if the ocean will still recognize me.
At Ichinomiya I changed trains. The local line feels like a proper railroad, windows that open, metal that rattles softly underfoot.
When the doors opened at Ubara, I stepped out onto a crumbling platform washed in salt haze, a village sloping downward toward the invisible ocean. A continuous haze of light cloud flattened every color, so the sea and the sky would meet without ceremony; two greys agreeing to melt into one body.
Passing those closed doors I felt a quiet kinship: built for warmth and sweetness in my own season, but also this. Quiet.
ā±ļø
15 April 2025
Ubara Beach has complicated sand. Not fine, pure beige, but coarse polished flecks of broken shells and microscopic jagged volcanic rock. Eroded hillside cliffs have a saltābleached familiarity, even if this beach feels slightly off, slightly surreal.
I grew up around the ocean. Junior lifeguard over the summer, paddling out with my dad after school no matter the weather. Lazy Saturdays sailing with my friends, crewing their familiesā sailboats. It was the constant rhythm beneath everything. When I walked away from May, I let the ocean recede with her. Nearly a decade of manicured inland country club grass. Home was always ocean, but I began treating it like wallpaper, like scenery for a life no longer mine.
The season hasnāt opened yet; the lifeguard tower is padlocked and leaning, its red cross faded. The water here idles around 18Ā°C, and every breeze carries the clean sting of kelp and a hint of stiff, unforgiving winter sea spray.
I shake out the single beach towel I carried across the Pacific; a cotton relic whose candy stripes have faded to ghost pastels. I kept it after I boxed up the house, after every other textile was donated or lost. It is the only towel that I take to the beach with me. I remember carrying it to the beach every morning that year we lived together, May would lay her head on it while I played in the water. When she gave it back for me to dry, it was warm and smelled like her hair. Remembering this now makes me feel sick. It is thinner now, subdued, all of the spare soft fibers shed into the wash. I spread it on the cool slightly dewy sand and lay back listening to the surf crashing and seagulls.
The surf roared regularly when a set rolled in. I long to feel powerless in frigid water with the sting of salt water in my nostrils, but that is not why I am here. A single shorebird padded the glossy tide line, each step imprinting a brief halo (capillary desaturation) before the shine seeped back and the bird melted into the reflection.
I closed my eyes and imagined May sitting next to me on her towel in her bikini, reading a paperback novel. But instead, a white-hot anger erupted from my chest. My fists clenched around handfuls of sharp sand, tiny volcanic fragments pressing hard enough into my palms to almost draw blood. I wanted to throw something, scream something. Why did she have to leave? Why did I have to stay?
Burying my face in the towel, I cried; Mayās passing is almost the only thing that has ever made me cry uncontrollably. It is almost embarrassing, or like giggling too much about a silly joke, then I laughed spitefully. And I lay there empty. When the chill finally reached my bones, I stood, brushed sand roughly from my towel, and bowed a little toward the horizon.
I walked up an alley from the beach with two story buildings on either side. It was getting dark and I went slow, my legs burning, surrounded by the steep neighborhood streets of San Clemente. I usually buy an ice cream at the American style konbini on Del Real, but today I just walked.
When I got back to the minshuku I laid on the tatami for maybe a few hours, it was really dark when I heard a gentle knock at the screen. Outside I found a small bento with saba and takana pickles. I hadnāt really planned to eat, but the small gesture. I felt a little better and turned on the light for a while.
Later I couldnāt sleep and took a walk to the beach in the marine layer chill. Down a few steps on the sand I found the torii I had seen earlier, and looked through it at the break. They represent the barrier between the world and. I stared at it for some time and considered walking through. Walking until I found her again. A lone fisherman walking by, smoking a cigarette, startled me in English, āThe mornings here are beautiful.ā I bowed slightly and stepped back.
I just sat on a short concrete tide wall for a while after. Maybe a few minutes, or an hour. Larger sets of waves had been rolling in since the sun set. The patch of dry sand where Iād sat earlier was gone. The lowering temperature was starting to push fog out of the air, and I could feel chill breakwater mist hitting my face like little salty blips.
Returning to the minshuku, I wondered if I had really gone by the water, whether I had really thought anything or if my body was just moving. The fisherman, still smoking nonchalantly with a friend, watched me leave.
Back in the room I took off my clothes and slipped under the kakebuton, still cool but refreshingly dry against my bare skin. As I closed my eyes my mind wandered, so that my body felt like it was at home in 2003 listening to the surf break from bed. Impossibly distant now, I feel that old anxiety under my ribs.
š
16 April 2025
When I woke up I had a small breakfast from the minshuku. The breakfast ended at 8:30, I made it at 8:23. The woman running the inn smiled at me like she had been waiting, and gave me a rice ball and bowl of miso soup. I still didnāt feel very hungry, wearing the same clothes from yesterday, but miso soup is agreeable anyways and I ate ravenously. Tofu has a strange gelly texture, but I kind of like it now. The slice of scallion still had a slight crunch.
Outside, the overcast had burned off. The beach looked different in full sun. Overwhelmingly bright, my eyes refuse to stay open and I see little sparkles as waves reflect the sun. By the shore again, the surf from last night was still going, bigger sets rolling in steadily. Closing out with those rumbling booms that you can actually feel. Of course the fisherman had been right, it was a beautiful morning. It was not really a sitting on the beach day, but the seemingly universal morning users of beaches were out. Joggers, old women walking in pairs, a man doing stretches in the beach parking lot.
I walked from the north edge of the cove to the south, a ritual I had enjoyed as a child. It was almost a mile both ways, and at the point there were people fishing off of the rocks. I noticed a forgotten concrete shrine tucked just into the woods, I do not recognize the kanji to what, but wrote it on my wrist with pen (ē) to look up later. And I (even though I never had before) bowed deeply, twice. I felt like a tourist. I slipped one of my colorful plastic bead bracelets off my wrist clicking over the others, pale skin underneath, and set it in front. I used to make them all of the time on stretchy cord, with hearts and stars, magic. It was one I have worn for years, through a lot of different times in my life.
Everything I packed for the trip fit neatly in my backpack and I did not need to stop back by the minshuku. I walked from the shrine to Ubara station. The low beach plants gave way to proper Japanese forest so quickly it was like a door. Dense leaves, that particular green humidity that makes everything feel present and fresh. I dropped a letter to my sister in a red postbox along the way. No wonder they have so many words for moss here.
Nobody was waiting at the platform. The next train wasnāt for another hour but I sat on the bench anyway and ate a granola bar from my bag. The kind that turns back into granola upon opening the package. Trains here run exactly on time. I didnāt need to be.
A crow landed on the platform sign and looked at me curiously, I threw the end of my bar on the ground. We sat there together, neither of us in any particular hurry. When the train finally came, I got up and the bird hopped over and flew off with its snack.
The trainās airbrakes hissed as I climbed the narrow steps, a pneumatic sigh of a beast begrudgingly staying put for a minute. The car was mostly empty. I found a window seat on what would become the coastal side, we were still in the woods. I settled onto a bench with my backpack on the seat beside me. The doors sealed with a soft thunk. As we pulled away from the platform, the familiar rhythm and acceleration pressed me back slightly. The gentle pull of the train accelerating reminds me of leaving, the freedom. That morning I had terrified Abby.
My sister begged me to go back to him. She called it mending, called it patience. I screamed at her: you would have to kill me to keep me from leaving. I had asked May to leave me. And she didnāt understand thatās what she was asking for. I did leave, and drove north to LA, then further north. I stayed in a travel motel by SFO until I could get my visa. Listening to fading rumbles of aircraft departing all day and most of the night. I havenāt talked to any of them since.
By the time I got back to Tokyo it was already dark, and I stopped by the konbini on the walk home. Tokyo felt stable under my feet.
š
23 April 2025
Tonight I looked up the kanji that I have been carrying on my wrist. I have been careful not to wash it off, I am not sure why. Or maybe I am just not showering enough, I do not know anymore. Raven or crow, karasu, or black in Chinese. The shrine had been unmaintained and weathered, sitting slightly askew on the shifting earth. I would like to set it right, a gaijin. I would never. Maybe say the karasu told me.
The past few days have been weird. I think a part of me did walk into the crashing surf that night. The cruelty is that every day since I have been here has been a nice day, but it is the smudges on me that make them dingy. I stayed and talked with my lab partner today, it reminds me of undergrad. She invited me to a zine club, as if I could belong in a place like that.
You, my faithful journal, would scare them.
š®
25 April 2025
I went to the library today, in the basement with the stacks of microfilm. It is usually empty and the motion detector lights turn off after a while. After Ubara I have had trouble focusing at school, more trouble sitting still. Today I felt like thirty sets of eyes were staring at me in the front row, I tried to hold still, but my face was on fire and I could only feel my bra straps.
It was so embarrassing, I got up with my bag and walked out up the stairs. Outside it was between classes and the mall was crowded, I stayed at the edge of the chaos with the plants and dipped into the library.
There is a nautilus spiral staircase from the lobby, and I climb down three flights to the very basement. I feel the degree cooler air on my skin, a faint vinegar smell from the film. There is a corner with an old couch from the 80s and I sat still until the lights went out and the greenish emergency light filtered down the aisles. It is so quiet, underground, out of time and space.
I rocked for a bit like I did with Abbyās baby, and by myself long after she grew up. And felt my heart beat too strongly in my body. Thump, thump, thump, I fell asleep. I wasnāt sure if it was still day, I sat up and listened for a bit (that dull roar the world always has when it is quiet.) I know why I come down here.
It was just past twilight when I left. Around the last curve of the stairs, the libraryās huge glass atrium flooded my eyes with the almost dark sky, the lobby vibrating with movement and low sound. Students whispering at study tables. I had korroke in the student union for dinner and finished another homework problem. Cantors theorem is oddly comforting to me.
š
28 April 2025
Today I found a letter from Abby in my mailbox, it had been there for a few days I think, I never check it. It had so many forever stamps. Her precise angular calligraphy on a large scrap of washi paper, she was thoughtful like that. I did not read it but folded it and gently crammed it in between the pages of a textbook in my bag, immediately transitioning to walking very briskly towards the bus stop. I had almost forgotten to drink my coffee and found myself hopelessly a few minutes late.
Lately I have been burying myself in my headphones and listening to electronic music, it is devoid of emotion and I find myself dancing around the house. It is not that everything is better really, but it chains me to the present. My thoughts do not wander far from the bold carrier of the bass; uhn, my hands wash dishes, tiss, I walk by the ficus tree, uhn, I remember May, tsss, I put away my laundry. I have been turning my emotions off, and I am not sure about turning them back on ever again. This is probably healthy. So I stuffed the letter into a textbook and forgot about it for the day.
Except I did not forget about it, I miss Abby, and her daughter. I miss my parents. I miss California. I used to be cared for. I feel Abbyās love for me, and her concern; weighing on my back slightly or maybe helping carry the weight. I donāt know. How did she miss who I was in Hermosa? How did she not long for when I was happy? Afterwards, when I was fading away with him?
At least she knows I am alive. How did she explain me leaving to Caroline?
Diary, it has been a long week. I finally got home from the hospital.
When I was cleaning the kitchen knife, I dropped it and it fell on my thigh leaving a clean 3 cm stab wound. Red blood immediately started oozing out. Relentlessly rising and overflowing, pulsing out in waves. This was very bad. I tied a kitchen towel around my upper thigh and twisted it with a kitchen spoon to stop the bleeding like I learned. It hurt so much and I was feeling faint already. I dialed 119 then said kyukyu and something about stabbed before I felt myself slump and pass out. So close, I would have been found weeks later, I knew this. In that moment I really hoped that I would wake up again, but I had never been so sure I might not. Goodnight. Goodbye.
And later I woke up in the hospital, everyone speaking Japanese, I guess I made it. The translation service on the phone said that I was lucky to keep my leg, I needed vascular surgery. The translator said my tourniquet saved my life, as the surgeon carefully watched me understand.
They asked if I was OK, like how the knife stabbed me. Was someone there? No? Did you? Yes?!? By accident? Hmm.
They kept me for almost three weeks, long after (I think) the arterial repair was stable, and my anemia was resolved. At some point I talked to a psychiatrist who spoke English. He said that he contacted my family, Abby in California. Then he asked what I could do to make it to an appointment with an outpatient psychologist next week. I said āno drugsā.
I have four units of someone elseās blood pumping inside of me, another person, another personās life. Another person.
I told him that I would stay alive to honor the blood I had been given. This is absurd because it was an accident. I wonder what Abby said to him; I really need to read that letter.
He asked if I had anyone to bring me clothes, immediately an absurd question, but I had been naked under a hospital gown for the entire time. Ah, my clothes were soaked in blood, and the apartment. I said no, he sighed and smiled wearily at me.
My lab partner who sits at the bench next to mine visited me every day. She shared her lecture notes and we talked about math. I have no idea how she knew to find me. She asked if I had a pet or plants that needed to be watered, I said yes, my misfits. I gave her the key, I didnāt think about the mess at the time.
Today she came with clothes from my closet; some airy wide leg pants, a plain v neck shirt, my light bralette, underwear and socks. Then a nurse said I could be discharged today and went over care instructions. Finish the antibiotics, ibuprofen for pain, no vigorous activity. Arrange for a taxi at 5pm; Rui helped me with the phone app . The nurse put me into a wheelchair and we went out of the front entrance, Rui following alongside. The late spring light is much harder than when I went into the hospital but it is fresh, and it is slightly dustier than the perfectly filtered hospital air.
My leg felt very odd trying to hobble up the stairs, I could barely do it. Rui put my arm around her neck and wrapped her arm across my back putting her hand flat just above my waist, pressing the bottom of my ribs. At first the coordination was awkward but we found a rhythm by the third step. I had to put a lot of weight on her back with each step but her small shoulders were very strong. Half way up I needed to rest, and put my head on her shoulder. I felt safe. I didnāt want her to leave.
Walking into the kitchen, I did not know what to expect, but it was clean almost like nothing happened, except a slight hint of a strong cleaner. An odorless almost too fresh smell of really clean. The knife was missing from the block. Rui explained that the landlord hired a cleaning service for me.
The maranta was starting to sprout another leaf and somehow the basil seemed happier. The ficus in its 40L pot might not have actually noticed I was gone. Rui fed me a bento from the fridge. She rolled out another futon next to mine on the tatami and we sat up and talked for a while. Her real name is RuƬxī, she is here to study too. I wonder if she is also running away from something. As I was getting drowsy she told me to wake her if I needed any help. I cried quietly making little damp spots on my pillow, and fell asleep watching her read a book, trusting the occasional rustle of pages after I closed my eyes. In the morning when I woke up she was still sleeping so I read a book, and wrote in you.
š
May 26, 2025
Tonight after we ate dinner and sat for a while talking, Rui told me that she had arranged something for me. She knows I need to wander at night but cannot because of my leg, not yet anyways. I am still so weak from being in hospital, and they say that the scar tissue will take months or even years to get all the way better. The stitches only fell out yesterday.
Her friend Haruki has a car. He works in the material sciences lab at our university and has replaced the body panels with carbon fiber. Haruki also likes to wander at night. Rui says she rides with him sometimes and wants to share this with me. We waited for him on my front steps. I enjoyed the night air for maybe ten minutes before he showed up. The car I immediately recognize as a skyline gt-r; something rare and iconic when I was younger in LA, with a slight bass hum as we walked up. Not loud, just a little extra. Rui opened the passenger door and folded the front seat forward to hop in the back, immediately pulling it up again. She reached her arm around and patted on the seat bottom; get in, get in. This is not exactly what I expected, but we are out here trying new things at least. Right?
Haruki asked Rui, āwhere to?ā, and she replied something in Japanese that I didnāt understand. Haruki has a steady hand, and we turn left onto the first freeway entrance opening to 50mph before we are even driving straight. The acceleration to the back and left are marvelous, it feels effortless, and I suddenly feel free. Haruki shifts lazily, and each clutch press has a little moment of weightlessness. We move smoothly to the far right lane like a blink, and fly by the now seemingly stationary traffic in the left lanes. The reversing of lanes from the US is almost intolerably confusing to me, and it is a mercy that I am not driving. We went for maybe an hour, before exiting in a blue collar area near the port. I smell Tokyo bay, it is humid and only faintly cool outside. Shortly we stop at an almost empty ramen restaurant and Rui says, āokay we are here, lets go!ā It is very late, but the restaurant is still open for night shift workers.
Rui helps me inside and says that Haruki will come back to take us home, or we can get a taxi if he is busy. We sit at a table and the server seems surprised to see Rui, or surprised to see Rui and me. They have a brief but fast exchange in Mandarin, not Japanese, and the waitress leaves. Rui explains that this is her familyās restaurant and she asked if her mom were there, that the server is her younger sister. The server, Ruiās sister, comes back with a few simple bowls of soup with just noodles and broth, they are not ramen. I immediately start slurping noodles, slightly spicy and distinct with five spice, while watching Rui talk more with her sister.
I am not sure how to participate in the conversation, or even if I want to. The language barrier works nicely here to my advantage and I can listen to the sound of Ruiās voice in her family language and know she is there with my eyes closed. In Sinitic languages tonal inflections carry actual semantic meaning, instead of subtext. It is hard to decipher the emotional register between them, but I do enjoy sitting in this small booth with our hips touching. The soup is really good, I wonder if it is on the menu or something you just have to know about. It also has pickled greens. Suddenly her sister turns to me and says in surprisingly American English, āhello, my name is Kayleeā and I immediately wonder what her secret real name is. I opened my eyes and told her that it was a pleasure to be here and thank her for the soup. That I appreciate her sister, I appreciate meeting her. Then they start speaking in Mandarin again and I close my eyes once more. The sounds of cooking and smell of the restaurant remind me of a place at home where I felt safe.
Haruki never did show up again. He was apparently in North Tokyo doing rolling races for money against rival car boys. We took a taxi back to my apartment, which was not terribly far away. Rui lives there, in the flat above the restaurant with her family.
š±š»āāļø
May 27
Today for the first time in quite a while I really looked at myself in the mirror. I have not had a haircut in Japan, or for even as long as I can remember in the US before coming here. My white blond hair is quite long now and looks nearly feral. I almost never think about it, but that it stands out is probably an understatement; a weird social friction that I donāt even realize that I have. This morning Rui brushed it for me, not that my leg stops me, but she has taken such good care of me. It is very fine and tangles easily, and has been tangling through several days of neglect. Maybe she is taking care of my mind instead. Usually people have pulled my hair a lot to detangle it, with painful little snags. Rui seems to know exactly how, working from the very bottom and never pulling hard. She ran her fingers through my hair and over my scalp a few times when she was done and squeezed the back of my neck. I sat very still.
She has been taking time off of school to stay with me until I go to my therapist appointment. Maybe the hospital gave her a doctor note as well, so she could take care of me. Oh I have caused a tangled situation. By accident. She says the upcoming zine club meeting is exciting, to get the newest issue that will be released early next month; a thousand yen for each copy but we get one for free. We are working on homework, and afterwards she wants me to try to walk to 7-11 with her if I feel up to that. It is just around the corner. I would like to have an ice cream and look at the fresh air. I have been so silly lately, it has been so long since I have had fun. Maybe I will insist we wash a tiny amount of laundry.
What scares me is not knowing if she shows up every day out of a sense of duty to keep me alive, because after reading you I am pretty sure she, everyone, believes the psychologist more than me; or if she shows up every day because she wants to be near me. Or both? Do the motives alternately contaminate one another? Am I keeping her here out of guilt? Wanting something is scary. Wanting to be alive is scary.
I keep staring at the empty space that used to be May, it is the last place that I saw her. It is the last thing that I have from her, the all consuming darkness, and I am scared to set it down. What if it folds inward and even consumes itself? What if it disappears and then I have no way back. I read in a pamphlet from the hospital that you have to let grief change you, but I donāt understand into what. I am scared of abandoning her. I am scared that if Rui stands in her place that the darkness will swallow her too. I am still scared to think of []
I want to draw silly demon faces and hearts in the margins of her books with a light blue pencil. I want to sit still while she brushes my hair so she feels her actions turn into warmth in my heart. I want to make her day nice, and to be someone she is excited to see at home too. I donāt want to just be a burden drowning in darkness that I wonāt let go of.
I want her to stay.
I am looking forward to getting ice cream and sitting in a laundromat with her this evening.
š§š»āāļø
May 30, 2025
Today was my first appointment with the psychologist. Rui went with me and waited at a cafe across the street. I asked her to come in with me, but she said this needed to be my space. That I needed to pay attention and take it seriously. When the psychologist asked me in the hospital how I could stay alive until this day, this appointment, I said something quick so he could check the box, and I was thinking of trying to do the same thing today. It was an accident.
But Ruiās eyes were almost pleading, like she knew something about this that I didnāt, and I decided to be honest no matter how much trouble it got me into. With the accident.
The office is surprisingly cozy given that it is in a hospital building, and she has a very healthy pothos growing as a vine wrapping around her desk from a single crumbling terracotta pot. The office is suspiciously devoid of natural light and I wonder how it stays alive, I casually checked if it was real when I walked in.
Dr. Nakamura asked if I liked her plant, and I said I did, that maybe I would trust her if this vine did so much. She scribbled something on her clipboard and set it to the side. Without getting up she gestured with her hand towards a couch and invited me to get comfortable. There was a pitcher of water with a few glasses in the middle of the table.
She was a middle aged Japanese woman with thick rimmed black acrylate glasses, maybe early forties, a little older than me. Her English is fluent but she is very careful with words. She introduced herself, and explained that the psychologist in the hospital didnāt have much time to talk when he saw me. She acknowledged that he did contact Abby without asking me first; explaining that in the hospital when someone comes in with that kind of injury there are protocols he has to follow. She explained that now we are here, the time is entirely mine, and asked what would be the most helpful for me to talk about.
I explained that to be perfectly honest I was here because it was required of me, and that I did not want to be rude or uncooperative, but that I could not imagine how she might help me. I mentioned that Rui almost pleaded with me to take this seriously. I expected her to argue with me, but instead she acknowledged that the hospital did require the appointment as part of my discharge plan. She is precise with language in a way that I find interesting and reassuring. She offered to go through what she already knows, it was mostly right, and asked me to elaborate on anything that didnāt seem right.
I told her about May, my roommate. I told her I have been here for maybe a year and a half now. I left my husband, my parents, my family, my life; explosively, I felt almost blind rage. I threw the stuff off my desk smashing a family photo. My ring was still in my desk drawer where I had left it months ago. I drove north to LA that day, and then San Francisco a week or two later.
I tried to tell her about the day that May [], but was being crushed in a wave with cold salty water stinging the inside of my nose. And then in a Japanese office building with a concerned woman looking at me through thick black glasses asking where I went. She says that she is scared that I hurt myself on purpose with the knife when I was gone somewhere else like that, and asked me a lot of questions.
She asked if I was daydreaming like that when I dropped the knife, and I said that I was walking the beach at night near the pier in San Clemente. I explained that I donāt remember dropping the knife at all, only being slumped on the floor against the cabinet looking at all of the blood, the knife scattered on the floor near my left hand.
I let her read my diary up to the point of the visit, it seemed easier than so much talking. But said that I wouldnāt share what I write after, especially about the visits because I think it would make me perform a part there.
She asked where Rui was and I explained that she was waiting across the street drinking coffee. She asked a few questions about if I felt safe, I did. She explained that it is called disassociating when I go somewhere else. She asked if Rui notices when I do, and explained that she needs to keep me away from dangerous things when I do. Rui put the knives somewhere before I came home. Dr. Nakamura wrote on the clipboard for a while.
She asked me to tell Rui about todayās session, specifically about the dissociation when I tried to talk about May. She gave me a card with a crisis number and asked me to keep it in my wallet. She asked if I would call that number if I felt unsafe before our next appointment. I said I would. She asked if I was telling her the truth. I said yes, I was surprised she asked that.
Noticing my pause she added; I always ask directly because it gives people permission to be direct. I thought that was odd, but added I am actually not sure it was an accident. I promise to be careful, and call her.
Handing back the diary, as I reached for it and it was in both of our hands, she said, āI do not think you should read the letter from Abby, not yet. Next session we can talk about what you are concerned it might say. Would you like to leave it here?ā I nodded yes and pulled my backpack to the front, unzipping the big compartment and producing the crisply pressed letter. I handed it to her with both hands and a small bow.
She gave me homework to thank Rui for something specific, and at least one time ask for help directly without trying to hide it.
Dr Nakamura also asked if we could meet three times per week for a while, and I agreed. I hope being honest was the right choice.
I sat and drank coffee with Rui in the cafe before we went home. She didnāt ask what happened and I didnāt tell her yet. Today was a weird day. I think I am going to try with Dr. Nakamura.
I wonder what she writes on that clipboard.
š”ļø
May 31 at 3:28am
I just woke up from a bad dream, and I do not want to talk about it very much. We will say I cannot remember the specifics.
I think what I am really scared of with Rui is; what if I do everything right and still get hurt, or even die. I think of her heart feeling heavy like mine and then the emptiness under my ribs pulls down a little more. What the therapist said about dissociating when it happened makes an uncomfortable amount of sense.
What if I am too much work,
I kind of wish that she was just here out of guilt or obligation. That would be so much easier.
But I think it is already too late.
I sat under the ficus tree for a little while. After a while I heard Rui stir and pat my futon finding only a futon. She called my name softly with a little upward inflection of question at the end, that millisecond of startled concern. I said, from the dark corner that I had a bad dream and was sitting under the tree.
I crawled back over the tatami and gave her a hug, I said I was sorry. And thanked her for being here. We held hands while I fell asleep again.
I think it is already too late.
š„
May 31
This morning I thanked Rui for making omurice. When she set it down I told her I needed to tell her something. I held both of her hands, looked in her eyes, and said thank you for making me breakfast. We lingered for a bit, and I kept looking into her eyes. In the light her irises are almost black, collecting me; my eyes wander to the folds at the inner corner of her eyelids (epicanthus), back to her eyelashes, then I focused again on her eyes. I mumbled thank you again and she sat down at the table on the tatami beside me. Sometimes eye contact feels like messing with a control panel that I do not understand. I think she received a message.
The letter from Abby that Dr Nakamura took away, it is important you know what it is replying to, because it has been in my thoughts. The envelope I put in the mailbox walking to the train to leave Ubara. I wrote it on the train ride to Ubara, not really to anyone, just to leave next to my backpack in the minshuku. It said a lot of the truth, stuff I was scared to. I was only able to because I would not hear the answer. Like how the memory of that day, the memory of Mayās empty eyes looking up at me, is unbearable. That my family were the villains, but apologized for never giving them the chance to choose that role. That I was sorry to everyone who cared enough to read this letter.
But then I woke up in the morning, after coming back from the beach that night, and it was still there. I asked the woman who had been so kind to me for an envelope and an awkward number of stamps. And then it was just a letter and I dropped it in the postbox, to Abby. Like finding the blood. Another accident.
Later in the afternoon we went on our now daily walk to the 7-11. It is just around the corner, but I walk painfully slow. At first I felt self-conscious and tried to hurry, but at some point I realized that it only felt like I was in a hurry, my leg moves at its own pace now. I move my good leg first and drag my hurt one to catch up, lopsided. Rui seems concerned that I will fall, but has stopped hovering so closely. A different version of reality avails itself to people walking slow. People walk by and are gone again. Small things like a little plant sprouting out of the sidewalk, or moss oozing from unexpected cracks. Today I saw some trash arranged to look like a rose. Cute.
I bought us both ice cream, this time we had taiyaki shaped ones with red bean jam. Rui also picked vegetables to make curry. Back on the neighborhood streets I asked for a rest (like always) and we picked the stairs in front of someoneās house. Sometimes I wonder if people watch through the windows when we do this, like a Chinese girl is taking a ghost for a walk. Using beans in a desert is a bold choice, but I do really like this flavor. I have fun for a while trying to pronounce words like thank you, RuƬxÄ«, and hello, because it makes Rui laugh a little bit. When we start walking again it is late twilight and the sky is deeply pigmented blue. It feels like rain is coming and the air is oppressively humid, which touches outdoor lights with a slightly ethereal glow. She still carries me up the stairs, although I am much better at it now. I still do not want her to leave.
Today was a nice day.
š§¼
June 1 +=-.
Today I was able to take a shower alone for the first time without feeling like I might fall over. Our little household does not need another accident. I am unclear why I want to, if I want to, but the pretext of my leg getting better requires it maybe. I need to talk to Rui about staying, about that I want her to stay, but I do not know how.
When I washed May she never got better. At first I did because we enjoyed it, she enjoyed the contact. Later it was because she might fall, and later it was because she needed to be clean. Then she was so easy to pick up, she was so light and small. I called out to Rui, āhelp, I am thinking about too much stuff in hereā, and she came back. Checking with me as she undressed to get in the water.
I hope I get better
Later that night as we were getting ready for bed, I think I surprised her by asking if we could get noodles again. She processed for a moment, but said that would be wonderful. I asked her, the first time, why she asked if her mom was there. And I am not sure she exactly told me, something about her mom asking a lot of questions. This felt hauntingly familiar; it is scary, but I need to be brave.
šŖ
June 2
Today I got lost again when I was thinking, Dr Nakamura called it a panic attack, which is silly because nothing panics me. Something went weird with the gravity and I could only crawl under the ficus tree and lay on the tatami on my back. I did not say anything, I could not say anything. So I laid there with my faithful alive but not living companion. My eyes gently watered, a new vocabulary my body has learned for being broken.
I could hear Ruiās footsteps pattering around the apartment, in every place in each room. I was the last place she looked; I am the last place people look, they see my problems, not me. Her footsteps pattered to me and stopped, she squatted down and checked my body, then my respiration. She talked to me, but in an ambient way, like āOh there you are, relaxing under your favorite tree. Do you mind if I sit with you?ā I reached my hand up towards her.
Rui took off her bra that way with the arm holes without taking off her shirt. She sat alongside with her legs pointing in the direction of my head, looking down at me, she lifted my hand under her shirt onto her sternum, between her breasts and held it against with both hands. She gently rocked and I could feel her taking slow deliberate breaths. She closed her eyes, and eventually I did too.
I remembered in the ambulance, after they gave me fluids I think, I remember waking up for a few moments. I tried to turn my head and I remember a paramedicās face. He said something I did not understand, but it seemed earnest. At some point I remember Rui putting a pillow under my head and knees.
When I woke up again it was dark outside and Rui was sitting with her back to my side working through a paper. I turned my head to look at her and she put the paper down. I think I looked startled, or terrified maybe. This kind of confused me, she put her hand on the side of my head and said something like, āwelcome back, are you hungry?ā I was.