| .japanese afternoon. author: bella gothica rating: pg category: angst, romance Standing on the pier at Santa Monica, it's almost as though you are beside me once again. The breeze on my face...it's nice. It reminds me of your touch. I turn my cheek towards the summer gust, feathery fringe falling over my almond eyes. Things are changing, hide. The raw agony of losing you has dulled to a gentle sorrow in my heart. Though no time shall ever change how I feel about you, there has been a change in the winds. Three years after losing you, I feel I am ready to move on. I am older, perhaps not so much wiser, but certainly different than when we met. It is time for me to let go of the past. A small chubby hand pulls at my own, causing me to momentarily leave my reminiscing and focus my attention on the most important thing in my life. My daughter. I ask her what she wants and it's the same story. She wants her father. She needs you, hide. Hideko is too young to understand what it means when other children have fathers that push them on swings and play in the sand with them. When she asks who you are I will not lie. I will tell Hideko her father was the most beautiful man who lived. And that he saved my life. Forgive me, love. It's the sea air - it makes me maudlin. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I was barely nineteen; wide-eyed naive kitten dropped in the concrete maze of Tokyo Central. My apartment hardly big enough for the mountains of luggage I tugged through the airport terminals, my grasp of your language hardly sufficient for someone planning to spend the rest of her life there. Two-hundred and eleven days after arriving in the land of the rising sun I found myself on Tokyo Tower. I was looking down on the world at sunset, but it felt like the world was looking down on me. Wind whipped around me but it wasn't the cold I was shivering from. I felt so very lonely. Japan was full of people, but after all these weeks and months I could barely count the number of people I regarded as less than strangers on one hand. I don't know what I would have done in those next ten minutes of my life. Perhaps I would have sought an end the easy way out. Perhaps I would have lost my nerve and crawled back to my apartment. But you changed everything, didn't you? Slick happy-go-lucky cherub with your cigarette and jogging suit. Charming grin and easy saunter. You brightened my world like a bare light bulb. You asked what was wrong and I osyter-shelled my way out of answering your questions. Never did you force me to talk. Neither did you coddle me like a green junior high student being enquired after by a counsellor. But the oyster opened up after being near the wrmath radiating around you like an aura. They better let you have a halo up in heaven, because you were never without one here on earth. A stranger who quickly became a saviour, you bounded over and gave my shoulder a light squeeze, and asked whether I needed a hand or a strong drink, in perfect English with a beautiful accent. I stared in wonder at you before smiling and taking the hand you offered me. Later, we made love on the shiny black bonnet of your car, the both of us covered in moonlight. My first time...gods, I was so nervous I was trembling. But you kissed my fear away, and you told me I was perfect. Over the course of the next week we met, sometimes in secret, other times in public. Within a period of less than seven days you came to show me what it was to live. But perfect things do not last forever, and I found that out the hard way, love. Of all my life, I remember a particular day so clearly. Through the years it has played like an old filmreel in my mind - almost as though I am looking into another person's memories, not my own. Standing in line amongst thousands of strangers, hot sun beating down on my back and neck, the heat seeped into my bones but not my soul. That remained cold and numb. Disbelieving. You could not be gone. You who had given life to the small being growing inside me. You who had restored my faith in my own existence. Only a few days prior to that, I had found out I was carrying your child. I was shocked, surprised and even a little scared; at twenty, I was unprepared for the responsibilities of motherhood. But nothing scared me more than the idea you were gone. How tragic, my love, that on that same day when the beginning of a new life was discovered, I was to find yours had ended so horribly and abruptly. And without you ever having known you had created something wonderful. Would circumstances have been different had you known you were a father? The day they held the ceremony for you...while I was standing in that line, my hand unconsciously drifted to my abdomen, stroking the warm skin from outside my long black shirt. It reminded me too much of your touch, so I cringed and withdrew my hand, tears springing from my eyes and flowing down my cheeks. I could not bear to wipe them away. In a way those tears were the proof you were gone. I had to keep telling myself that. I had to be strong. The strength you had provided to me would not fade away, and I would not let myself be tempted with the idea of giving up. I had to live for three now. To a pink spider who brightened my life one fateful Japanese afternoon. Thankyou; for saving me, for the love you gave me no matter how brief our time together, and for our beautiful baby girl. I love you, hide; Today, tomorrow and for all tomorrows after that. I won't forget how warm you made my cold heart feel. And until we meet again... ...goodbye. |