August 1965
Two hibakusha—
my husband and I
prepare for
night. He slams the shutters
upon the ghostly
cherry blossoms along
the stone walls
where I see the shadows
of three classmates
in uniform, matching haircuts,
and the smallest
one points to the parachute
that shattered
gravity. My husband
has learned
to keep out the wind
the ash-purple
Nagasaki dusk. He cannot
close out memory.
I press myself into
my straw mat,
gazing up at the prayer
scroll, the pieta
bottled in gold,
that hangs
above our whys.
I tighten my
Kimono around myself
as my husband
dips his hand
in iodine,
a snake-wine maker
in his wooden
shed where we met
one year after
as he curled an adder,
slit throat,
skin half off,
into the bottle of
fermented liquor.
The snake went on
writhing, snapped his body
against the glass.
I hid in the penumbra
of the rafters,
sixteen-year old leper
in a yellow Kimono
too bright for Hell,
my head downturned,
a few strands of hair
like brushstrokes
on a prayer scroll.
The elfin man turned
his tear-filled eyes to me,
You there too?
he said. I asked him
if snake wine
erased memory.
Twenty Augusts past,
I let my kimono slide
off like skin and turn
my back to him,
the mountainous
burns across my spine
with shadows of
their own. When he applies
the iodine, it feels like
the tears of the one-eyed
mother nursing
her limp toddler,
her lips
frozen around
her first word.
Skimming his hand
across our history,
my husband talks
of the time
our son discovered
his shadow. He lifted
his arms in prayer to see
if it would follow,
turned around fifty
times and asked us if
he could capture it in a bottle.