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As a mat of creepers,
Is the sea at Iwami;
Amongst the mangled words of
Kara Point,
Upon the reefs
Grows the algae thickly
Midoriko dug her toes into the warm sand as she held the treasured sheet of washi paper close to her chest to keep the sea breeze from tearing it. Not too long ago she would have been happy for the wind to shred it to pieces, or for the tides to snatch it from her hands and dissolve it, erasing the words it contained from existence. Not too long ago, those words pierced her heart every time she read them.
Not too long ago she hated the man who wrote them.
The poem had been Kirinmaru’s goodbye. The morning after their first night together, Midoriko had woken up to a space beside her devoid of the person she had been looking forward to waking up to. In his stead was the poem, which Midoriko read cautiously, its eventual sorrowful and melancholic tones alerting her that something wasn’t right.
On the rocky shoreline,
Grows the jeweled seaweed;
Soft as jeweled seaweed
Trembling, lay my woman;
Lush as thick green algae,
The love within my heart, but
The nights when we slept thus
Were not so very many…
Midoriko had looked and called for him everywhere, praying that she was wrong, that she would find him waiting for her by the riverbank or beneath the wisteria trees, but he was nowhere to be found. At that moment she vowed to read his parting words again and again until they didn’t hurt anymore, until she didn’t shed a single tear or flinch when her lips pronounced them.
Summer passed, and autumn came and went in the blink of an eye. In the winter, she felt close to forgetting him, close to acceptance, but then Kirinmaru returned and all of the pain she had worked so hard to bury resurfaced in the blink of his mesmerizing emerald eyes which she had taught herself to despise while they were absent.
Like trailing ivy
Are we parted and as I came away,
Gut wrenching
Pain within my heart
Is all I felt, and
Though I look back
On the mighty prow
Of Watari Mountain-
Its yellowed leaves
Scattering in confusion…
Forgiveness seemed impossible, but to her surprise it came quicker than she could have ever imagined.
“You kept this?” Kirinmaru asked, gazing at the slip of paper still pressed to her heart, as he stood over her.
The words they bore no longer hurt, not since he’d presented his reasons for leaving without warning, not since she’d understood he’d left to protect her.
Kirinmaru offered her his hand, and they walked hand in hand across the shore.
“Of course,” Midoriko answered, smiling. “My darling’s sleeves…I cannot see them clearly…
Through the cloud breaks…Appears the drifting moon…”
Kirinmaru stopped, his eyes shining as he gently moved a loose strand of hair from her face and tucked it behind her ear. They stood in the water as the tides pushed and pulled, but they remained still, gazing into each other’s eyes with an intensity that rivaled the intensity with which the setting sun shone on them as it began to set.
“And when, to my regret,” Kirinmaru began, “those sleeves had vanished…The heaven-calling, setting sun shone out, so…A brave man as I did think myself…Spread barken cloth…robe’s sleeves all wet through.”