It was the most amazing thing. A huge distance had been shortened, two sleeves of a sweater met when it was folded. He folded it. I could not see, but my right ear was suddenly filled with a noise I had only seen on tv. “Irasshaimase—!” again, and again, and again. A street market in Ueno. The real street market in the real Ueno in the real Tokyo in the real Japan in real time! The one and only love of my life standing in the middle of the hubbub, a hubbub I long to dive into… Could he picture my awestruck face? Could he picture the silence reigning in the dark living room while that street in the future was ever so lively? Nigiyaka… that’s the word for what I heard, for the mystery that leaked through the lines over the ocean way up on the mountains into my brain. Meanwhile, in the past, birds still dream of flying higher, water slides down the drain pipes, striking them with sounds that remind me of a steeldrum… Shizuka.
Some minutes away from now, birds will come back from their bluer skies, sit on cable spiderwebs, and start a conversation we tend to miss. Drowsy people will pour into a red bus, stuffing it with sneezes and hot breath. I will walk among my own kind of “irasshaimase.” Nigiyaka. He will ride a train into the rice fields that saw him grow. A familiar house will stand alone in the middle of a land that has belonged to them almost forever. The drone of crickets will whisper “oyasuminasai.” Shizuka.
You see us smiling; only will our hearts imitate our faces when our watches are set in the same time, when we stop living in a world of antonyms.