Author: Olavia Kite

I picture them floating through cylindrical black and white chambers, chasing flying food balls like amoeba, orbiting around a marbled cobalt blue hemisphere. In utmost silence they dive into the void—slow-motion underwater ballet for medieval knights—and fix a solar panel or weld an antenna.

Thousands of flickering lights—stars among the stars—surround a crumpled picture. A family of three: the little boy with missing teeth and a crew cut now wears his yellow sleeves rolled up and walks a pretty girl with a pink cardigan down the street. Heavy memories in weightless nights, comforting yet useless to confront the mystery of a deceitfully unwavering crystal ball. How does it feel to see it all—that godly omnipresence from the distant skies—and yet miss every milestone of your loved ones’ lives?

It is an undeniable feat, going where no one had dared to go before. People talk about these travelling heroes from their rocking chairs on cool verandas, watching their own children run and stumble on the grass. Meanwhile, there where they point with dreamy fingers, the loneliness within blends with the outside darkness, and no sun is strong enough to illuminate the spreading black ink of perpetual quietude.

I think I understand them, even though they’re nothing but a blurred sketch in my mind. I do—for in drifting away, I, too, have felt the weight of my heart compelling me back home.

My words don’t want to leave my mind.
Like motorbiker acrobats they roll around the inside of my head,
Crystal bingo ballots holding out for an ever-secret winner number.
My words yearn for endings in magenta and yellow.
But white is the most frightening of all beginnings,
And in panic and anxiety they roll and roll and roll.
It’s snowy out there:
A white sheet of paper has covered the fields with emptiness,
And no plum buds dot the air to signal the end of winter.
I am a cocoon, lazing on the junction of two bare branches,
Concocting petals in my entrails while asleep.
I could stay like this forever.
But if a single streak of sun slithers through a crack
—Not much more is needed
To let the icy blue skies drown my pupils—
My womb shall explode in a storm of magenta and yellow
Diffusing like fireworks on the coldness of the ground.
White is the most frightening of all beginnings,
And in hopes of flying, my words roll and roll and roll.

I woke up early to not do my homework. You see, the thing is I hate studying. I’ve done it for too long, and the only thing that’s come out of it is utter boredom. A few friends, too, but those were made outside of the classroom.

I have a giant calendar with the map of Japan, but it fell off the wall some days ago. I tried to put it back in place, but it kept falling again and again, so I’ve let it drift around the room. It doesn’t look graceful at all. It lingers on top of boxes and suitcases like a stiff lady who refuses to lie on her chaise longue. Behind it, my guitar has fainted against the bookshelf. I look at it and wonder if I’ll ever play it again. The thought of my nasty neighbor listening to me is enough to make me desist. I miss singing, though. I remember all those afternoons after school when I’d play for hours on end. I used to write songs. We performed some of them live once.

I have a lot of new books from Maruzen, but as long as I’m not done with Tsukiji I will feel guilty for entering the fascinating world of Ha Jin or getting lost in Asimov’s futuristic imperial universe instead of clapping at this American anthropologist who had to stop taking his Japanese students on field trips because they understood fish merchants’ language less than he did. It took a soothing explanation from another anthropologist (thanks, Gianrico) for me to retake the book… less than a week before my presentation. It doesn’t matter, though. I hate doing stuff I’m not interested in.

I miss reading just as I miss playing music. Just as I miss writing—but I’m writing right now. However, this story is nothing but my story, that boring tale about a girl who has finally begun to hear the words in her head again after maybe years of silence. One day, this story will become one about somebody else, and the setting will not be the dying grayness of this abandoned yet inhabited forest—or maybe it will be so, with a different name and a different way to fight the coldness which refuses to leave the room despite the poor efforts made by that old coughing heating device. I’m starting to believe the machine is allied with the weather to spite me. Maybe the neighbor has summoned evil spirits to make this winter ever so bitter inside this room, only inside this room.

The suffering —and the rambling— should not go on forever. I must go out and face the wind, if only for a little while.