Osaka
Maybe it’s the change of scenery or the extended alone time. For example, while snaking your way down the aquarium today, a group of kids ran by and you remembered a hot summer evening in tenth grade. A boy asked you over to frolic around in the rain with him. The two of you ran down an incline from the sidewalk to the swings outside of a middle school. Seeing the kids run down the ramp, you remembered that feeling of tumbling over your feet, of needing them to turnover fast enough to catch you. Nearly falling, but never quite. When you took your braids out later that night, your stick-straight hair had a soft crimp to it.
Or how on the Shinkansen, you watched the conductor beckon an older couple to their seats, and something about the gesture reminded you of a day when a ninth grader motioned you into an empty classroom during the afternoon arts block. She asked which adult at the school you would be most comfortable talking to. It was phrased as hypothetically as possible. As in, you know, just in case, who would it be? As if the 9th grader were merely conducting a survey for a school project. You felt uncomfortable that though she spoke as if you knew each other well, you didn’t recognize her at all. Perhaps she had been a mentee from one of the orientation sessions way back in the fall. You named a few teachers; she said thanks and left. Graduation followed shortly after, and you never saw her again. Perhaps when you’re back you can pull out an old yearbook and try to find her.
Or how in the Airbnb, with the slats shut and electronics powered down, you find yourself in inky silence, and you’re remembering a sleepover at your best friend’s house. She got up and left just after bedtime at her parent’s request. Her room had no light, and nothing coming from under the door either, leaving you in an engulfing blackness. You’re remembering how different it made her seem to you, knowing that this was what she saw every night. You still had a bird night light and glowing stars on your ceiling. You had a computer blinking on your desk. Your shades were shit, so there was always light from the road. You could always hear the highway just beyond the thin rail of trees outside your window. Some days later, you learned that when she spoke to her parents that night, it was to find out that her brother had had an accident in another state where he lived, and that the accident was that he had overdosed on oxycodone and needed to be revived at the hospital.
Flat on your back, all alone in the studio big enough for a bed and nothing more, you’re remembering that the thing that upset you most was thinking that your friend must have come back to her dark room, and knowing that you were asleep on the floor, must have inched her way slowly around your imagined shape, and that when she laid down, she must have stared up at nothing at all. No light, no sound, like deep in a cave when the tour guide turns their light off and you wave your hand in front of your face, and there’s nothing there, no color, no texture, no movement. Almost anything could appear in that space.
