15 May 2022 / Hiroshima
Dear AT,
A young woman is practicing the violin to the sound of passing traffic. Her right arm is raised at the elbow in circling toward the bow, while her left extends gently to support the instrument’s neck. Her hair is long and unpinned, falling heavily across her face toward the collars of her yukata. Several other tall and beautiful women fill the room behind her; they recline naked and apathetic on wooden furniture. I admire the violinist from this dimly-lit, second floor apartment in Yokohama, my cheek pressed to the wind flowing through the open shoji.
I’ve been thinking about my latest arrest, last week by a civilian officer. The boy was an unnamed neighbor who arrived at my door with a folded parcel tucked beneath his vest. With elongated fingers and calloused wrists, he clasped my lapel and pulled me close with the irrepressible tenderness of a teenager. His weak voice speaking my name recalled my sister’s description of morning: a green fog and a soft hiss, like the sound of magnesium burning,
AT, do you recall Anna Karenina’s repulsion to the word love? Would Karenin still have used the word had he never heard there was such a thing? When I imagine the violinist, with face flushed and lips pursed, speaking fine, quiet words to my quivering ears, are the raised hairs along my neck my body whispering, love?
Time flows with tremendous momentum, and this second-floor apartment will soon be disfigured beyond recognition. Ungrown, the young officer will misplace my address and forget the sounds of soil shifting. Unheard, the violinist’s songs will resonate with the extraordinary thinness of honey, cut with saliva and held in the mouth too long.
Sincerely,
H