the clouds pass, the storm lingers
Haruka looked around attentively. The cafeteria was almost empty. Solitary figures were hunched over their dinners, slurping soba at the booth. She looked at her notebook, then back up at the neon lights hanging overhead. Haruka was waiting for the poem to gasp to life, and weave itself under her touch.
And one day we will sail home
for better days to bathe our limbs
for better days and longer days
we will sail home to warmer arms
The verse was tentative. The rhythm, awkward. Haruka flipped her pencil to erase what she had written, but just then, she realized her hands were awkward too, bony and pallid and colorfully veined. She flipped her pencil again and pursued her work.
There will be unaccounted sighs
for every wave we fail to break
and indeed there will be cries
for every gust that blows our way
along the misty lace of waves
Outside, the sound of sirens approached, climaxed, and dissipated into the night. The man behind the counter made a show of checking his watch every thirty seconds; the cafeteria was supposed to close at nine, in five minutes.
But one day we will kiss the land
with parched lips and ancient smiles
worn by the lacy mist of waves
and indeed there will be time
for brighter voids and jocund cries
“We’re closing,” muttered the man behind the counter. Tired, faceless men filed out of the cafeteria, one at a time. Haruka hastened her hand; the poem wasn’t finished. If Haruka didn’t finish now, she never would.
And on that day we kiss the land
let us pray to senile gods
and on that day we quit the sea
let us fall in warmer arms
The man had left the counter, and was now approaching her, annoyed. Haruka hastily got up, collected her poem and her backpack, and darted out of the cafeteria without saying a word.
Outside, the weather was damp and cold, like a moldy laundromat. Haruka wrapped her scarf more firmly around her neck. She walked down the crawling, narrow street and thought about her writing. That same day, her sister had told Haruka to break out of anonymity. She said it was disgraceful to be faceless. Then again, Haruka’s sister rarely ever came to this part of town. She wouldn’t understand.
Haruka wandered to the place of faceless disgrace. She fell upon the camp where the refugees were piled up. Countless men, women and children scuttled in and out of tents, dressed in their sole possessions.
Donate to Fukushima victims, a sign said, pointing towards a tall black urn. Haruka halted in front of the sign, suddenly seized with emotion. She looked away, at first. But all Haruka saw was human misery and faces she wouldn’t remember.
Haruka slipped her poem out of her bag, folded it with her awkward hands, and pushed it into the black urn.
*This piece won a Silver Key in the 2015 Scholastic Art & Writing Competition*
*This piece was published in the 2015 Edition of the Fridge, the Lycée Français de New York's literary magazine*
