There is an elderly man at my block who has been wearing a white shirt and a pair of black slacks every time I see him. I don't run into him much nowadays: maybe once or twice a month. When I was still schooling, I would go down every morning at five forty-five with my mother, and he would be sitting behind the staircase, stretching his thin back ( Read more... )

Too soon, it is midnight. Too quickly, it is time to sink down into the sweet molasses of slumber. Yield to an enclosure, hide beneath comfort, and haul yourself out after an internal promise for five more minutes. Give in, give up, it is too easy to lose track of an Ultimate Purpose. When days are to-do lists and deadlines and putting out fires in ( Read more... )

I closed my eyes. The bed was lumpy under my hips, and my palm was plump under my cheeks. There was a smell of afternoon shine, old wooden desks, and dog-eared textbooks. I opened my eyes. You were there. The duvet, which had hugged you for the years before me, now kept both of us snug. Too snug; the sunlight streamed through the blinds, skipped ( Read more... )

The days draw open and close like curtains, hastily and quickly, with eyes registering the outside as a rough brush of colours. My favourite times of the day are those spent on the train. I have come up with many favourite times over the past month, occupying my hours with the creation of new routines and new traditions. It has been a month, or ( Read more... )

During dinner, my father spoke about a hypothetical future that indicated a picture-perfect life in his mind. "In ten years time, there will be a little Yoshiko"; my brother would be married and have a toddler named Robert; my sister would be married and traipsing around a film shoot; I would have found Mr Right by then; and he would be seventy- ( Read more... )

It has been months since the last proper update. Very often, in the hush of the night, I would sidle along the edge of the bed, create a thin triangle with the wall and a litter of pillows, and nearly, very nearly, capture the urge to write something. Then, just like that, a yawn would heave its full-bodied throatiness, and poof, my eyelids would ( Read more... )

The pen would stain the page a tipple of dark, inky blue. I always fancied the thick nibs: they flowed so much smoother than the thin ones. With the G205s, you would get chicken scratches on the pages behind, and scraggly skeletons of what you had written before. Suppose you got caught passing notes? Suppose somebody shaded over the epigraphs with ( Read more... )

And I ask myself, "is this not love?" every night, as if reaffirming the verb would reinforce the noun; this feeling that I have been experiencing, these actions that have seized control of my muscles over recent days, they are substantiated by each other. I don't know the grand gestures; my first declaration was in initials, and I left the puzzle- ( Read more... )

Coming together ( Read more... )

There was a large oak tree, with strong, arching branches that lifted their chins towards the sky, waiting for kisses from the sun. Its leaves fluttered coyly like lashes, and breathed in the sweet, sticky air of summer with a thousand diaphanous nods. It almost always felt like summer, accompanied by the far-echoing giggles of little children, ( Read more... )