ANCESTRY
I see my mother in my hands.
I see my grandmother in my feet.
The beauty and glory of my ancestors
are written on me.
Their wisdom is woven in my skin.

CEREMONY
I won’t shy away from my nakedness.
Imperfections no longer repulse me.
Sexuality no longer disgusts me.
Solitude no longer haunts me.
No longer fearful,
they are a ceremony,
each an expression of my richness.
I embrace, I embody, I cradle them
as the emblem of my womanhood.

APOSTASY
My beauty lies within the sensual unfolding of
desires and pleasures
and secrets and lies.
Stripped of pretension,
this unadorned beauty, this vulnerable courage
shines with gentle confidence,
untamed and unapologetic.

Naoko,
no one else can hold the light as you do,
boldly cupped like nectar in your slender
hands. no one else bears so well the weight of

my dreams. when i perceive the place where true
growth begins, there is only you, Love, at
its core. here, all light wears your silver scent.

“When I think of you,
I feel eternity most intimately.” (from Takamura Kotaro)

I promise to honor the daily rituals that have become our ceremonies,
and to continue to celebrate the beauty we find in these mindful gestures of love.

I promise to always communicate with you from the center of my existence.

I promise to make our love “a moving, growing, working together, whether there is harmony or conflict, joy or sadness.” (from Erich Fromm)

I promise to always and forever be grateful for the gift that you are in my life.

Eien no ai wo koko ni chikaimasu.

Naoko:
As I make my solemn vows to Tim, I want to thank my family and friends for preparing me for this day.  Though she’s not here today, I’d especially like to thank my Obachan for her constant presence and love; Arigato.

if you were my poem
I would savor you
allmorningeverymorning
like our sweet morning coffee
and dance along to the
rhythmic clickings
of your spoon against my cup

if you were my poem
I would find
a coffee cup
still atatakai from
the warmth of your lips

thank you,
for leaving behind
a kiss
on my morning sip

“When I think of you,
I feel eternity most intimately.” (from Takamura Kotaro)

I promise to honor the daily rituals that have become our ceremonies,
and to continue to celebrate the beauty we find in these mindful gestures of love.

I promise to always communicate with you from the center of my existence.

I promise to make our love “a moving, growing, working together, whether there is  harmony or conflict, joy or sadness.” (from Erich Fromm)

I promise to always and forever be grateful for the gift that you are in my life.

永遠の愛をここに誓います。

Our families and relatives were big drinkers. Mama drank regularly with us inside her. We all had a predilection to alcohol. We never lacked lessons on drunkenness from Papa, and it became our refuge. I don’t remember much of my childhood, but his drunken episodes linger with foul clarity.

Our life was full of pretense. A good-looking family, we appeared happy. A shallow extravagance filled the void created by the absence of affection and integrity. A sleek, black Mercedes. A racehorse that never raced. A thousand dollars cash under my pillow for my birthday. Colossal losses at casinos. Our extravagance was borrowed. Our pretense shouted that everything was just alright. It was consistently shattered along with the glasses and ochawan, the cordless phones and remote controls, even my Mama’s ribs. And my childhood. But the pretense was as resilient as any other habit. It would be right back in place the next morning, though more fragile and less convincing to me every time it reset. I learned to feel disgust.

Back to my initial question…if I had run out of luck earlier in life, I wonder how my family would have reacted. If I was dead, would they be more reflective? When I was a premature baby with a high risk of retardation or blindness, did they pray? If I had fallen on the other side of chance, retarded or blind, how would they have treated me? With love? Remorse? Shame? Would they have embraced compassion, or would I have been too heavy a burden to carry? I began life with slim chances at survival or normalcy, and here I am now. Just lucky, I guess.

I haven’t received a single phone call from my parents since I moved to the States 13 years ago. Not on my birthday. Not at the New Year. Not even when my Obachan passed away. Never. I could be dead, sick, or in danger and they wouldn’t know it for months. There must be meaning in this. We exist without each other, except for our brief, annual visits. Without the extravagance, the pretense, nothing is left to fill that familiar void for me. This distanced silence accentuates their vanity. They ignore the problem and replace the feelings with luxurious gifts. That’s the solution they’ve cultivated and carefully preserved. I don’t want another Gucci bag, I just want them to call me.

I write to them. I write about them. I continue to write and there’s no response. Nothing.

There lies something dark in this act of self-observation or, rather, a submission to my unconscious state, to my subconscious existence. What does my submission mean? My choice to hand control to my subconscious by putting my consciousness to sleep…what does this mean?

Yet another dawn of submission, relenting to euphoric, effortless sleep. To drift off and away, to sink, float, and drown in weightlessness. What lies beneath this deliberate momentum to be swallowed in sleep? Laziness or torture? Pleasure or punishment? Is it a giving up or a giving in? A release? A surcease?

Tonight, haunted by those dark hours of dawn, I am buried in restlessness where time expands its frame, becomes thick and heavy, extends its arms exponentially.

I am saturated with sleep, disturbed.

ume candy jollies around my mouth.
my teeth and tongue frolic in sweet-tart sap.
finding the perfect crease,
the ume pit plants itself,
on my tongue,
spreads its roots into the walls of my mouth.
branches multiply before my eyes,
bursting with blossoms,
that declare my peace, my love,
my nature,
each a ripe, red blush.

just as the first ume bud opens its lips,
a fragrant downpour of ume rain in japan
unlocks Mama’s ribs,
her caged heart soars.
a crisp plum breeze
resuscitates the weary wings of her withering spirit.

she listens her way home,
humming a song to her soul.

she sleeps in my branches,
singing a lullaby of mercy,
of resolve.

it is a gift,
belonging.

I didn’t steal the fire;
They made me from the earth to punish themselves
for lifting the veil,
for the secrets they glimpsed,
for their whispered confidences.

I sit in the corner,
my shadow chews guilt and regurgitates loneliness.
I do know why I’m here; I am to be held responsible;
I will be the mistress of ceremony.

Depression visits, wearing a pink slip.
Vulgarity knocks around without a word,
and Mania hangs out on the porch.
Pity fucks hard at misfortune.

An archaic desiccation staggers Pandora’s morbid universe, and unlocks the box.
Melancholic dust that falls short behind lust and schizophrenia,
worms through the cracks of dawn.
The first items and entities burst out, wild, mad, chaotic:

A diaper soiled in hard liquor.
A kid’s backpack with cigarette burns.
A toilet flushing down green bills.
Mama’s broken ribs, a lost fetus, her postpartum depression.
Papa’s crushed balls.
And then I recognize, Obachan’s smiling forgiveness.
Onichan’s imprisoned dreams.
Oneichan’s bruised youth.
Papa with his whores on the days of our birth.

I bend over the box to coax and encourage the reluctant.

Emerging slower now, timid, are the raven crooked wings,
the perfunctory misdemeanors,
bliss poisoned by the stench of ignorance,
the vacuum of tradition.
Hatred and Jealousy undress, copulate,
and give birth to the desperation that manslaughters justice and rapes virtue.
The cracked skulls of the effortless dead gape and watch as
A Black Sheep in a diving bell chases a Scapegoat.

My tongue, a cancerous piece of cantankerous meat,
has been abducted.

I get into bed with Calamity,
I wrap myself in barbed wire;
I am calmed by stabbings of truth.

I had seen it there, still inside the box when I closed the lid.
Though they are not yet ready for it, Hope remains.

just as the first ume bud opens its lips,
a fragrant downpour of ume rain in japan
unlocks Mama’s ribs,
her caged heart soars.
a crisp plum breeze
resuscitates the weary wings of her withering spirit.

humming a song to her soul,
she listens her way home.

she sleeps in my branches,
singing a lullaby of mercy,
of resolve, like a dream.

belonging,
it is a gift.