She had a purported sense of loneliness back then
back there,
a purposely avoidant stare
of the clearly ambiguous type.
As words were raging and raving
around her like unleashed katanas
or revolving doors,
she raced to hide into tapioca pearls
– the one time she had found some, debutante’s luck –
or apples as big as her face,
hesitant.
Buying food out of a 500 yen coin
biking it off,
soon biking from one konbini to another
without buying anything
’cause nothing was worth more than emptiness,
the sword-carved and stud-crafted sort.
She only had words and shame coming out,
an acid string she would fill her room with
in small bundles of well-known acrimony
Of the rigid type, she was
most unlike me this poem this story
telling with many directions and blunders
how she came to be me.
Okāsan had a pure sense of connection – she still has
even though she’s not okāsan anymore –
with her purple art stare-making
up the clearly extrovert type.
(I bet she, the one that’s I, became a little like her, the one that’s she
over time spent
and money in konbinis
over food that we did eat.
But I am skipping steps now,
avoiding the core
that’s essential
as usual.)
CORE (to be sung over and over, as there is no other verse to come):
As she made me list all the times in my life
I had been saved by luck or whatever
I wanted (it) to be,
she set a dim fire in my heart,
the one that tastes like matcha
gently rocking.
Then as if not enough she put out
my burning hand with hers,
and I can still feel raging and raving katanas,
a hurl of untouched coins,
my metallic bubble of fear shaken up
for not having been touched in eight months
(inside or outside).
*This poem, her/my story in Ōsaka, was written for dVerse Poets Pub, and will most probably be published in my upcoming ebook, Borders.
Hiroshimem 