Ballistics
We’re on the Hiroshima platform for the shinkansen—the bullet train. If he were an English-speaker, he might be composing in his head some wrought verse about the bullet ripping through his heart. He just kissed and said goodbye to a woman—young, they both look young, like I’d been that time—and said goodbye again, rushing back to her side for one (more) last kiss. She stows her suitcase, meets his gaze through the window. They cling to the moment stretching between them, faster and faster. Soon she’ll be somewhere else at 320 km/h.
My throat tightens. I know the world-obliterating pain they’re in. It makes you so inside yourself you don’t even know how silly it is to trot along as the train pulls away, reaching for last seconds of connection as if they matter, because to you they do, more than anything. At least with an airport farewell, you’re not tempted to watch takeoff. Nothing to see. You’re back in departures, an apparition in the crowd. Then a layover. Maybe you get a novel, get Chinese, get loaded. Maybe you don’t know it or can’t face it yet, but you’ll never again find her in the Tokyo crowds. You’ve never been to Texas, but you’re making a fool of yourself in front of the Dallas/Fort Worth cowboys, stumbling leaky eyed through food courts and magazine stands, hoping one of these gunslingers will put you down like a sick dog. To be baggage-less at departures is a warning sign.
She’s gone, and he’s alone, somehow unable to leave. I’ve never liked somebody so much without even having spoken, so I want to befriend him, fellow casualty of the long-distance relationship. I want to be his wise, American older brother. I want to talk to him like strangers did to me that day, shock him back to life. “You look so sad,” one said. I’d bristled, What are you talking about, lady? Maybe I could echo in Japanese: “Son, is everything okay?” But I won’t translate or put a hand on his shoulder or buy him a beer and okonomiyaki to share under damp, falling petals. I know he needs a friend, but I know even more that all he will accept is distance. Maybe he’d even tell me what I told those worried Texans, angry at being seen so clearly: “Don’t worry about me. I’m only drunk.”