If I were to describe you, I would say you’re like sand; shifting beneath the feet of those who walk with you, disappearing between the palms that reach for yours. At the beach, you told me you couldn’t swim. Many years ago your cousin almost drowned you. It was a game, just play. An accident that went too far for too long. You were about 13 when you learned to gasp for air. At the beach, you said we couldn’t go too deep. I told you about the waves: how to be under, over, inside them. You shouted when they took you, for a moment—I saw your eyes when you realized you no longer had control.
Your lips were salty, and the water sizzled after the waves passed. I held my hand just above the surface, and felt the foam. Do you hear that? I asked. You didn’t at first. We decided the ocean was blue.
Once again on land, I found you different. My hand in yours, you could pull me towards you and gravity would obey. You held me tightly against your chest, cheekbone pressed to collarbone. But the waves had softened you—hadn’t they?
There are drums beneath the ground at Shinjuku Station. Have you noticed? At a cafe, sitting in a chair outside I can feel them beneath my feet; giant, invisible drums. I thought we had escaped them. Maybe you thought so too. The trains going in two directions-–three, four at a time; drumming, rumbling—they didn’t find us for a while. The whisper that did—she sits beside me, playing with her hair, smoothing out the wrinkles in her skirt. She found me when you were smiling, telling me everything was fine.
When I look up it’s been four days. Or maybe one million crowded in one. Two pigeons and one sparrow peck at the bread crumbs near my shoe. The trains are spreading like webs underground, and a man with a small bag strapped to his hip asks me for three hundred yen. No money? He says this as if he knows, then holds out a palm filled with coins. He walks away, head bent. I take a sip of my coffee and notice it’s still hot. I remember that a typhoon came, then left. The clouds moved very quickly across the sky the next day, like they were running from something. If I were to describe you, I would say it’s possible we’ve never met. You ask me what Level of Green the leaves on the trees are, and I tell you I no longer know. They’re sure to change color before they begin to fall.
On the beach we collected shells to keep. Do you remember? We spoke of marriage, and how impossible that would be. I wouldn’t be able to wear this bathing suit, you said. My skin was bare and burning, and you didn’t want anyone to see. Days later it would peel; white flakes on my arms you didn’t mind kissing. By the ocean, you touch the place on my stomach where a child could grow, and I am someone else when you speak of what they would look like. Our misfortunes are distant shapes. We have no shape. The present is defined by a few mundane objects: damp towels, half-empty cans, sandy backpacks, and reddening skin.
The light is different in fall. It slants in sharper angles, and always reminds me of the fall of the year before. What was I doing then? The wind wants to ask. I was drinking hot coffee somewhere, taking notes, and wondering when I should cut my hair. This time last year was the first time we met. If I were to describe you then, I would say you were like a friend.
Sometimes I write words and they don’t feel like they’re mine. The author, Deborah Levy, has said of her autobiographical writing, The narrator who is myself. I want to say this is true. I want to say, yes, yes, yes, I know what you mean. When the words come out, they only half belong to me. Is that what it’s always like? With everything?
My painting is still at the club where I left it in a rush last Friday. Did you see it when you stayed? I think it’s waiting to be picked up—I wonder if it has dried. Oil takes longer than anything else. Sometimes weeks just to know itself.
I think this is how it will be, for a while. I will sit on the balcony at home, legs folded and feet slightly to one side. I will remember my own hunger. How to taste quiet. Swallow. I will take to dance floors—the beating pulse of things. Enter mostly empty ramen shops in Early Morning. Slurp and hate the spill on white. I’ll try to remember how to grasp the grace found in Formlessness. Beauty in Flaw and Foible. Stain as Story, not Map. Maybe I had forgotten How to Taste Possibility. With companions like Past and Perception and lingering Fracture—
What shade of green is this? You ask. Your voice is soft. The rain is at the window and I tell you it’s almost impossible to know.
Such a poignant piece--how, in relationships. we weave in and out. You remember a detail of your connection and then you move to another thought, and back and forth. Just like relationships which are often much more complex than we would prefer. Beautifully written as always. Thank you for sharing