This morning I was sitting on the little balcony outside kitchen window and the cat visited me again. I am not sure if she belongs to anyone, she has a sun faded red collar. Sometimes she follows me when I take out the trash.
Anyways, this morning she brought me a âgiftâ, in quotes because I am a human girl and not a cat, but I digress. A bird, covered in saliva and a little blood, she dropped it at my feet. I picked it up gently and it moved a little, then it relaxed. it died. I donât know what to do with gifts like that.
Before bed I sat on the tatami for a bit going through my trinket box; I looked at a really old letter a friend wrote me. I am not ready to talk about it, but she said I remind her of a moth.
âïž
2/7/2025
On the train ride home today there was a girl reading a book who reminded me of an old friend.
I think in the way she stood, with onne hand resting lightly on the overhead strap, the other holding a paperback. She was wearing a slightly too large blazer, and her hair was tucked behind one ear like she was growing it out but it wouldnât stay in a ponytail.
There was a slight dense scent of orange blossoms like when cool air settles in the evening after a hot day. My chest softened, like an automatic brightness from catching a familiar scent of someone you love. For an instant my body turned toward it, looking for her. Then the recognition. Not her. Never her. The train lurched and I was startled back standing too close to a stranger, the air suddenly only hot regular air.
She didnât look up the whole time. The train rocked and the wheels ocassionally screeched on turns. I was standing close enough to see the pages of her book; they were 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 is gentler. âInk assumes its right, but photo blue leaves room to change your mind.â
But for a second I felt nineteen again, my skin warm from holding her pale hand. The moth letter was still crammed in my journal like a pressed flower.
May asked to see me after class. It was a little rainy and we met by my favorite tree. The leaves smelled earthy and floral, kind of like tobacco. She had made me a bracelet with plastic beads in a club meeting and was excited to give one to me. She rolled it over my wrist and hugged my hand against her collarbone.
I didnât tell her I was scared, only disappeared into the night. I woke up again the next morning as from a dream. 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.
đŁ
2/12/2025
Today I washed my hair to get ready for class but fell asleep on the futon for about a half hour. It dried kind of nice from the pillow, with waves.
On the way I stopped at the konbini for a quick snack and got yogurt. I thought I picked the jasmine kind but reached behind to grab the second one (who trusts the front one?) and accidentally got the bitter citrus jelly one. I felt kind of silly for being so particular and ate it anyways. I didnât mind, I think that is how they sell that flavor.
When I was finishing up some homework in a common area at the library a girl dropped a pencil and exclaimed something under her breath that made her two friends laugh. There is something about that kind of laughter that is quiet and conspiratorial, like they are part of a world I perhaps have not been invited to yet.
In the evening I worked through two proofs at my desk and gave up on a third. The third one wasnât even hard. I couldnât make my brain move right.
Some days are like that, idk.
I walked home without my headphones on. I didnât notice until halfway back, but I didnât put them in. Instead I closed my eyes and placed the sounds in my memory of the world. A counselor told me this was a grounding exercise decades ago.
Today was not a sad day.
đ§Ą
3/3/2025
For caffeine today I got black coffee and sat with it at one of the concrete tables in a forgotten corner of campus where students like to smoke. Black coffee is kind of like smoking, bitter and a little harmful, it will probably make my stomach hurt later. I do not smoke. A tour group of high school students marched past with a guide narrating that they were walking past the modern architecture of the math building. She did not mention the depressed grad student decomposing on a bench. They were needlessly rowdy and I started down into the black abyss of my drink.
It was slightly cold in the shade, but one of those spring days where it almost feels warm. And it almost feels like leaves will grow on the trees. The fig tree has new buds. I closed my eyes to listen to the ambient sounds, some students talking, distant traffic, and an ocassional clank of a flag flying in the wind on a flagpole.
That day. Sitting alone outside afterwards, the overwhelming finality.
I felt like I was sinking, drowning, giving up. And then my eyes opened, and it was back home in Dana Point.
The concrete was gone, replaced by my feet resting on damp fine sand, the morning fog starting to burn off. A sudden warmth radiating on my chest and shoulders, the soft woosh of waves folding. It was unmistakable, I was on the beach, the long stairs behind me all the way up the cliff. My familyâs orange umbrella planted deep in the sand, we always dug it in with a little trowel from the chair pocket. Canted against the wind, the ribs occasionally flexing to pockets of turbulent air, slapping like a sail in light wind. My dad carried it down with a towel over his shoulder. My mom carried her chair and a small cooler; I only ever brought fins and a towel. Today she was reading a paperback novel creased at the spine, we drank grapefruit soda. My siblings were not there, probably doing something dumb and teenage instead. I donât remember why.
Looking up at the ubrella I was lost in the pattern of the sun poking through the fabric, the crash of waves in front of me and I could hear sea birds behind me near the rocks. Everything still feels possible.
It Is 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 must have closed my eyes again, because the sun was at a different angle and I was back at school. A vending machine clunked somewhere behind me. The high school students were gone.
It is a beautiful day. It really is. Nothing that really matters to nature has changed. The breeze carries an icy hint of spring, sharp and green/ That is the cruelty; nothing is sad. It is a normal day, like every day before and after.
I sat for a while and looked at the sunlight on concrete. Then I get up and throw my coffee away (it did make my tummy hurt btw). Thatâs all I can do today.
đ
3/13/2025
I went for a walk tonight.
In LA the night felt claustrophobic, smaller. Tokyo feels different with a web of urban main streets washed in high CRI white light, then dark winding webs of nameless living streets.
Back home I would have been more careful about this, but Tokyo feels safer. Or I do not care anymore. What happens, happens.
Occasional vending machines glow like little bubbles, each with its own pool of color. Blueish white, refreshing. Light pink of neutral light mixed with red, like love. A sickly green one makes me feel underwater.
Next to one a man was looking at his phone and smoking. By another two girls were whispering with their bodies leaned to bear a secret. I saw another with a guy wearing a suit holding a coffee as if it might warm more than his hands.
My little circle of light in LA was a buzzing sodium streetlamp in front of our house in Hermosa. It had an achromatic orange glow, like fog. Projecting my personality into the dark. Well, maybe it was less acrhomatic and more deep orange, idk, maybe it depends on the color temperature the viewer is acclimated to.
Before we moved out I left a big marker tag on the front stairs, of a crescent moon with light beams pointing straight down into the ground. Disappearing straight down into the ground. I used to carry one of those really big sharpies from the art store with the pungent smell and sloshing tank of ink. The ones for being different, the ones for crime.
One machine had a broken flickering screen and the drinks inside were all upside down and sideways. I think it was hit by a car. The ground in front had tire tracks and was tacky with dried soda. I kept walking until the sticky sensation wore off my shoe (which I hated).
It still doesnât really feel dangerous.
I used to think I wanted to belong somewhere. But maybe now I want to be left alone by something that can do it gently. To disappear maybe.
These shadows seem gentle.
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.
đż
3/16/2025
My apartment has pretty nice windows, but we are always in the shade of much taller buildings which have outcompeted mine in height for better access to light. Only plants evolved for the dim forrest floors are fit to survive.
On my kitchen sill there are a few plants, a basil that has elongated and yellowed towards the light, a jade clipping I broke off an ouside planter that is growing roots but not much else and a lone maranta leaf that I felt sorry for on sale for being unhealthy. They keep trying.
In the bedroom my ficus thrives in the deepest dim. When I prune it, bitter milky sap pulselessly oozes from the cuts like blood. In the wild they can race several stories tall towards open sky, mine is poised and waiting, maybe. idk.
I water them on Sunday, when I steep a tiny piece of the puâer cake Mayâs parents sent when I moved in, and let myself remember a little bit.
This morning costal light is pouring through the tall bay windows, I am eating sugary cereal with cold milk, watching cartoons while everyone else is still in bed. Everyone is home. Sunday used to mean something.
What the fuck was I doing again?
Oh right, the soil is dry but a little cool, I watch the water soak in.
Sometimes I worry the plants in the kitchen can smell the spicy insant noodles I seem to always eat. The pepper steam is so storng it makes my breath catch. Maybe the basil just misses the Ligurian sun and clean Mediterraean air. Wrong continent, wrong life.
The kitchen plants still grow towards the light every morning when a few minutes of direct sun sneak throguh an imporbable opening. The ficus in my bedroom and the quiet shadow in my chest, keep growing under the slow calculus of light against gravity and consuming darkness.
The kitchen plants look alive for the neighbors at least.
đ
21 March 2025
This morning I saw that cat again on the balcony, no gifts this time thank god. Her tail was sweeping arcs in the dew on the ground and she looked through the window. I wonder if she remembers bringing the bird.
It bothers me how light it felt in my hand, and how it fluttered a little and then stopped.
May used to leave cups of tea half-finished around the house. When I would find them days later the surface sheened with that strange iridescent matte rainbow skin. Kind of like oil on a puddle. I looked it up once, polyphenols reacting with mineral stalts from the kettle. She collected mugs with tiny chips or flaws, from her past, or sometimes thrift stores. She said they have character. I kept washing them long after she was gone, as if somehow it would bring her back.
Over the winter at our house in Hermosa we never ran the heater. We left the bedroom window cracked slightly and Pacific air slid in as a cool laminar stream. We would sleep tangled together with her cold feet pressed against my legs. My hands would wander over her body. Our warmth convecting through our pile of quilts. Sometimes I would wake to her still laying in bed on the other side of the pillow, watching me. My roommate.
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 couldâve been was a version of me I never got to grow into. Me the lesbian.
I never gave them the chance to reject me, I emptied a part of myself and called it self-preservation. I threw out an entire life to make space for theirs. I didnât kill it alone, I had plenty of help, but I didnât try to save it either.
đŠ
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 didnât 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 donât 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.
đ
3 April 2025
I did laundry today.
The laundromat I go to is in a derelict strip building wedged between an out of business restaurant and flower shop that is only open on weird days. When it is open the laundry smells like lillies and bruised leaves. But today they are not open and the air smells like detergent and old newspaper, the free newspaper they leave out for bored patrons. I zoned out for a bit looking at the vertical columns of blocky kanji tied together with sparse katakana. I should learn to read better. Everything glows iridescently under old fluorescent lamps. Washed blank.
The dryers are strong and loud and run all of the time. I like to pretend they are the low earthy hum of some 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. I watched the sleeves of my sweatshirt tumble in circles and my hair rise in a tickly way from static. I thought about nothing then and it was nice.
I folded the clothes at the big table in the corner by the back wall. Somoene left an origami crane made from pink paper with tiny stars.
It is weird, like I worked so hard to be in Japan, but I still feel stuck kind of.
The fabric is warm and very dry, I use an odorless detergetnt but it still kind of smells like something. I stood there for a while folding my laundry and staring into space, mostly staring into space.
đŠ
11 April 2025
Today I am leaving for my holiday at the beach. I woke up really early so after the train ride I will have enough time to check into the minshuku and look around the town a bit before sundown. It was slightly hazy with fog and for some reason the ratcheting sound of pedaling bikes riding by stood out, echoing against the walls. I stopped at the coffee shop that I like as a treat. They luxuriously, grind real beans, not the synthetic whatevers they grined up to put in vending machine canisters. The cup was a bit too hot and hurt the web of skin between my thumb and finger.
Tokyo Station is really big. It makes me kind of dizzy, there are endless escalators (to the lines tens of fathoms underground), and cryptic signs entirely in Japanese. Without any understand them I followed them like a Turing machine zipping along a tape, ocassionally questioning if the route I am following is actually computable or if I might loop forever between the signs.
Eventually I found the Sobu line (I knew I would) which leads out of Tokyo. I miss the beach at home. The beaches adjacent to Tokyo are on the bay and not the open ocean, it is sheltered and the surf is tame. They are crowded and road-level during the summer covered entirely with umbrellas like tourist beaches. I searched Google maps for a while to find a good spot. Ubara is a crescent facing the open Pacific Ocean. A thin sliver of sand edged by brutalist concrete on Street View.
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, like they are the railcars and I am sitting still. From the unique vantage of the train it seems that every free space in Tokyo is claimed for something with wires and signs occuping every dimension, maybe even unknown ones. Eventually the city got shorter and started to look like suburban San Diego, what they would call the countryside here.
At some point, after Chiba I think, the air in the car started to feel saltier or something, or fresher. It reminded me of driving back to San Diego from Arizona with the gradual shift up the mountains from desert scrub, then descending gradually to the crisp ocean humidity. Seeing the 5 running next to the coast. I loved when it was grey outside. Is change always like that? Nothing, nothing, then suddenly the air tastes different and of course it has been happening in increments for hours.
At Ichinomiya I changed trains. The local line is on older rolling stock and feels like a proper railroad with wood parts and windows that open, and air brakes. I am kind of mesmerized by the constant slight rattling sounds with old grease and diesel smells.
When we got to Ubara, the doors opened onto a crumbling concrete platform in dark green mossy woods, humid with a sweet woodsy smell. The day was hazy with costal fog that did not seem like it would burn off before sunset. The road sloped downwards towards the village and eventually to an invisible ocean blending in a continuous dark haze into the grey sky on the horizon.
Along the main road through the village there was a lot of shuttered tourist stuff, colorful but faded, obviously dated at least spirtiaully to decades ago. It reminded me of finding the odd piece of tourist kitsch back home, invariably in those tourist beaches that are only thriving for a second in the summer with people from the midwest. The vending machines here (I know right?) seem disused and have a film of dust. I wonder if this is waiting for customers this summer, or only for customers from a bygone past.
Built for warmth and sweetness in my own season, but also this. Quiet.
â±ïž
15 April 2025
This morning after I woke up I left the minshuku for a walk on the beach. It is still hazy and all of the sounds were a little muffled but the sun still felt a little hot through the grey. I brought the pineapple towel, I remember buying the stupid thing at that Target in the hills of Laguna Beach with May. We stopped to get some flip flops because one of mine washed away in the ocean and it was in the seasonal area on sale. A small thin thing, but I think that it is light to carry and it makes me feel like am part of the beach instaed of sitting on top of it. The colors have faded a lot since it lived in our house in hermosa.
I walked out a bit onto the beach and at the edge of where the sand was still damp from high tide I threw it on the ground and sat on it. The sand here is coarse polished flecks of crushed seashells and microscopic jagged black volcanic rocks. More of a principled gravel than anything, like the steep break at crescent bay. I found a dry sea urchin spine one time there.
The season is not open yet and it is still pretty cold to sit on the beach, but I am wearing clothes anyways. The water is cold, and for a second I long to feel powerless in frigid water with the sting of salt in my nostrils, but that is not why I am here. The lifeguard tower is empty and a little disheveled sitting at an angle and dirty. I guess there is nobody here to keep watch over me.
When I was a kid we were always around the ocean. I did junior lifeguard every summer, and me and my dad paddled out on bodyboard every day no matter the season, we wore wetsuits. For a few summers in my late teens and early twenties I crewed sailboats for my friends parents. I was so proud when I got my masterâs license. When I left may I also walked away from the ocean into nearly a decade of manicured inland country club grass. The ocean was always still there, but I treated it like scenery.
May never used this towel, she liked to lay on a much nicer one, but she would roll it up and put it under her head as she laid under the umbrella while I played in the water. When she gave it back for me to dry it had that sandy beach warmth and smelled like her hair. Remembering this now makes me feel a little happy. I laid on my back listening to the surf crashing and seagulls feeling the cool slightly damp sand bleeding through to my back.
The surf rorard regularly when a set rolled in, and since I have moved to Tokyo these are the first waves I have heard crashing. A single shorebird hopped along the glossy tide line, eacy step imprinting a brief halo (capilary desaturation) before the shine seeped back reflecting the warm gray of the sky.
I closed my eyes again and imagined May sitting next to me on her towel in her bikini, reading a paperback novel. But instead my fists clinced around handfulls of the sharp sand so hard, tiny fragments of jagged volcanic rock pressing into my fingers until I could only feel the pain. I wanted to throw something or scream, but all I could do was bury my face in the towel. Why did she have to leave, and I have to stay?
Why can I not cry? I didnât even at the funeral.
I laid there and my face felt very hot and my eyes watered and my body was shaking, maybe with rage, I donât know. Mayâs passing is the only thing that had ever made me cry uncontrollably and now I just canât. I canât even kind of remember what happened, my brain will not let me. And then I just laughed spitefully and uncontrollably. And then I laid there empty. In the evening when the chill went all the way through my body, I stood and brushed the sand roughly from my towel, and bowed a little towards 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 hadnât really planned to eat, but the small gesture. I felt a little better and turned on the light for a while.
Later I couldnât 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, âThe mornings here are beautiful.â 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 Iâd 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.
đ
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 didnât 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. The surf rolling in last night was still going with enormous set waves (taller than overhead) closing out with wooshy booms that I could feel in my chest. 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 (ç) 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. Rather unlike home, the low beach plants faded so abruptly to forest that it was like a door. I closed it behind me. 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 wasnât 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 didnât 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. The bird sat with me, also seemingly not in any particular hurry. When I heard the train distantly, I started to get up and the bird hopped to retrieve its snack and flew away.
When the train arrived its airbrakes set with a popping hiss sound before the doors opened, the pneumatic sigh of something begrudgingly holding still. I climbed the narrow steps and the car was mostly empty. I found a window seat on what would become the coastal side, we were still in the woods, my backpack set on the seat beside me. I heard the locomotive engines run up with a competent whir and then acceleration back into my seat. The soothing sound and feelings of motion remind me of freedom, of leaving.
That morning when I terrified my sister. Abby 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 didnât understand thatâs 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 havenât 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.
đ
23 April 2025
When I wrote that kanji on my hand in Ubara I used a permanent felt tip marker, and it is still there boldly. I think like a tattoo, I have caught people staring. I have been careful not to wash it off before I get the chance to look it up again, or maybe I am only not showering enough. I do not know anymore.
It says raven or crow, karasu. It also means black in Mandarin. The karasu shrine was unmaintained with branches overgrowing it. When I walked past them I didnât notice the path anymore as if I had finally escaped. I would like to go again with my garden clippers and clean the path, but pause because maybe the shrine does not want that. I am a gaijin anyways, I would never. I could say the karasu told me to.
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.
đź
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 Abbyâs 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 wasnât 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 libraryâs 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.
đ
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 Abbyâs love for me, and her concern; weighing on my back slightly or maybe helping carry the weight. I donât 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 âno drugsâ.
I have six units of someone elseâs blood pumping inside of me, another person, another personâs 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.
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 didnât 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. My nurse tole me that I could be discharged today (yay!) and helped me put the clothes on. It was nice to feel like a kid again. She went over discharge instructions: finish the antibiotics, alternate ibuprofen and acetaminophen for pain, donât run a marathon or join a circus, or walk too far. Rui listened attentively, and helped me order a taxi at 5pm 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. We stopped and I put my head on her shoulder. I felt safe. I didnât 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 RuÏxī, 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.
đ
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, âwhere to?â, and she replied something in Japanese that I didnât 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, âokay we are here, lets go!â 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 familyâs restaurant and she asked if her mom were there, that the server is her younger sister. The server, Ruiâs 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 Ruiâs 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, âhello, my name is Kayleeâ 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.
đ±đ»ââïž
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 donât 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 donât 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 donât want to just be a burden drowning in darkness that I wonât 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.
đ§đ»ââïž
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 Ruiâs eyes were almost pleading, like she knew something about this that I didnât, 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 didnât 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 didnât 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 donât 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 wouldnât 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 todayâs 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, âI 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?â 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 didnât ask what happened and I didnât 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.
đĄïž
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.
đ„
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 Mayâs 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 someoneâs 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 dessert is a bold choice, but I do really like this flavor. I have fun for a while trying to pronounce words like thank you, RuĂŹxÄ«, 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.
đ§Œ
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 be here alone, if I want to, but the pretext of my leg getting better seems to require it. 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, âhelp, I am thinking about too much stuff in hereâ, 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. I remember saying stuff like that to May.
đȘ
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 Ruiâs 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 âOh there you are, relaxing under your favorite tree. Do you mind if I sit with you?â 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 paramedicâs 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, âwelcome back, are you hungry?â I was.
đ
June 3 2025
She laughs, unconcerned, as if love is just the air, not a thing to name.
Today Rui was working on some poetry. She left this haiku written on an index card. I have never been very good at that, but I kind of wish I was. I tried anyways, of course it was sad, so crumpled it into folds and stuffed it in my diary, here:
Each day when the sun came up It was a little more [] Until she finally [] and I was alone in her house. I was alone. with her body every smudge an indelible mark, so i deleted myself but you tripped over me under the ficus canopy
Later in the evening Rui took me for a walk, we went on the train for a while. She sat with her arm around my shoulders and we looked at the city lights. The trains never run late here.
At Ruiâs house, we went up the stairs and Rui showed me her room. It had posters and trinkets of American surf culture. An old poster of Stephanie Gilmore on the beach at San Onofre. A few sea urchin shells and keyhole limpet shells like I used to bring May. I used to find them so deep at Crescent that it was blue dark and cold with only discarded shells from the rocks above, and my body started to sink instead of floating. The light in her room was gentle and warm from a few clamp lights. I guess I am the perfect broken trinket. I would like to stay in her room, I sat on her bed and lay back on the quilt.
In a bin under her bed, I lifted my feet as she fished out some string lights attached to a microcontroller board. She told me that they speak SPI, cool. When we were leaving, Kaylee gave me a hug, just long enough to feel important, nobody does that to me.
Back at the apartment Rui asked if it would be ok to decorate my tree with her project, I said of course. She very gently wove the thin wires between the upper branches so the lights went all through the leaves, sometimes glancing tentatively at me. Of course it is okay, my heart belongs to her.
Finally when it was done we laid together on the tatami looking up, the lights faded in from dark and blue to a gentle warm shimmering color so the leaves glowed like lanterns. Occasionally a light would flicker an interesting color. I was holding her hand, noticing the air.
đ
June 5
Last night I startled awake and Rui was sitting up on her futon in the dark. I asked still half asleep why she was up. I noticed she was crying and got up much faster.
She said that she was worried, scared, and she could not get back to sleep. She has not been sleeping well. She was worried what might happen if I, did something, and she slept during, and woke up to her own []. That specific fear. My heart felt smooshed.
I tried to reassure her that I was okay, which she probably understood as an obvious lie. So I tried to tell her that I would always tell her the truth, a bold lie after the other lie, that she could ask me any question. I apologized for that, for trying to slip away from the conversation. Okay, there is no way I can prove to her that I am ok. Reassurance is such bullshit, I said âthis must be really scary, I am sorry, can we have tea?â
We sat together for a bit on the tatami in the kitchen and drank tea (she likes this) and talked. I told her some stuff that was definitely true, that I am happy she found me, that I want her to stay because I like (like) her. I promised her that I am trying, like really trying, for her. My eyes were probably pleading like hers were to me before Dr Nakamura. After the heavy stuff Rui talked enthusiastically about her light project for a bit, each position had four rgb leds to make the flecks of color. I told her that I love them.
When we went back to bed I told Rui that I felt safe right now, not a lie. Rui needs rest, she deserves rest, she deserves to feel at home next to me. I need her to feel at home next to me. I looked at the 15 cm of tatami between our futons. She had unrolled them so so close the first day, but now the existence of any distance is a problem. I pointed at it and asked if we could push them together. She looked at me for a few seconds in thought, yes, considering what it meant, then again yes. I folded my quilt and set it aside on the tatami, spreading hers over our new bed.
I asked her to hold me, and pushed my back into her stomach a little bit. I grabbed a body pillow and put it between our knees and she stuck her arm under my pillow. She smelled my hair I think and I pushed her hand on my belly button.
đ
June 12
Some time afterwards when I was on my way to Japan, staying in LA for a bit, Mayâs mom called me. She offered condolences, and we talked a bit about what we loved about May. She, I guess they, invited me to the funeral, which I did not expect for some reason. After the ceremony there was a dinner at a Chinese restaurant and I tried to sit in the back, like an undergrad, like a guest. Instead I was whisked to a table with Mayâs parents, I sat next to her mom. Everyone there expressed condolences to me. I do not think I am this important.
Once the other guests cleared we stayed at the table and someone brought a pot of oolong tea that we drank until it went pale. They said thank you for being there, at the end; how May was happy. I bowed slightly but started crying which was embarrassing. They gave me a jade pendant, translucent milky green disc with a hole in the center and geometric engravings. It was oddly heavy in my hand and felt cool. I clenched it in my fist and held it against my chest.
Today I was looking through my jewelry box and Rui saw it. She asked about it, and when I told her the story she paused like someone had squeezed the air out of her.
May was born in California, she never really taught me about her family stuff, I never understood it. Rui explained that the jade had probably been in the family for generations, that I was Mayâs wife, at least in every way that mattered to them. That squeezed the air out of me. All I ever did to May was disappoint her, I was not loyal, not when it mattered.
Rui looked at me for a few minutes, like eternity, then gave me a hug. I buried my face in her neck and felt like I was at the beach. Her hair smelled like orange blossoms. I felt the same weight in my chest, leaning on her.
Later that night, after we did the dishes and had tea, I worked a bit in circuit simulations for the development board, before I get too far behind at school. Rui called her sister and they talked on the balcony for a long time, maybe an hour. They do pretty regularly, but this time I wonder if she talked about me and the jade. Are Ruiâs parents like mine now? Am I abandoning them? Am I their daughter?