Aging Tissue

A lifetime and a half passes in less than a second and a half!
Eighteen, isn't it! What's so much in that? Barely time's wearing away, just a moment, just a blink!
How easily it passed! And passes still, just like this...
Before my eyes, sorrows die.
How simple a death is simple! Understanding comes—how easily grief departs! No longer troubles me with all that.
Small life! So many sorrows died, look how they showed themselves! This much, yes, this much!
Watching and watching joy's birth, counting joy's children, how weary I am today!
How easily a person becomes a frame!
On walls, on desks, in the mind's breeze, in room corners they keep gazing—eyes unblinking, voice hushed... no sulking, no complaints.
Just the other day it was! Even now I feel... with these very hands I touch time, voice trembling,
"Papa, you see, everything will be all right!"
So unburdened! So untroubled! So carefree! So unheated!
Such honest, faithful feelings no lie ever gives!
That prescribed medical time—what efforts, what acting to forget it!
The days were passing too! They pass just like that, don't they!
December 16th. Nineteen ninety-eight. Fourth grade going on.
Special day, special occasion. At school. On the day I swore to turn the world upside down with one day's dance! The river's boatman says, Come, young one...
Papa in bed, I in parade. Ma had said, "Go, child, nothing will happen. Show Papa the prize when you bring it."
Marching drills and victory songs, lazy golden afternoon.
Victory's joy, a little raise in pocket money.
Peanuts, lozenges, flying through wind and sun on cotton candy's back, returning home.
Chocolate bar in hand—half already gone.
"Give me a little, won't you, dear?"
"Uncle will scold."
"Only if he knows. He won't know! Give me some, Ma! Let me have a little. I feel like it!"
I fed him. Some ice cream smeared down his chin, wiped on that tissue.
I moved his hair aside, that pale forehead. I kissed him. Papa smiled. "Silly girl!"
What contentment came, the whole half ice cream finished. Such contentment had never been in Papa's eyes before!
"Don't tell anyone again, dear. They'll scold terribly. Should I give you another one?"
"No more, Papa."
"When I suddenly leave, you tell them, child, Papa was very good. And a little foolish too. You'll say that, won't you, dear?" Papa smiled, with tears in his eyes.
When Papa spoke like that, what could I say—I wasn't old enough to understand.
These papas know everything, that's why they keep staring like that, eyes wide.
In those days, Papa survived eating the inedible and harmful. Age runs out, food runs away. What rules there are!
Never anywhere, even by mistake of the heart, did he look back at that ice cream—what yearning there was for it!
Death pulls everything just like this, even that ice cream...!
Never again could I feed Papa ice cream. Several deaths pass quite well with just one regret...
Year after year, December 16th keeps peeping. The blunt ice cream hammer strikes, keeps striking, in this head, in this body, even today, constantly...
 
All the pain
of this life
all the sorrow
all the shame
all the hurt
all the resentment
even gathering all of that together,
life is still greater than that. Count it a hundred times!
Life is still here, the little crazy girl is still Papa's, the girl still just as crazy as before, but no one calls her crazy like that anymore.
The frame is there, that day's shirt is there. I wrap it in my arms with love, touch it with eyes and lips. I still think, Papa is here! Right beside me, a little foolish, when he smiles!
That tissue is still there too—that tissue older in years than sorrow itself!