Lacuna
All day long, she cooked and cleaned for her daughter and herself. Trapped in the confines of suburban walls and cheap, billowing curtains, Sachiko ambled through echoing hallways with thoughts of yesterday and tomorrow. Heart aching and feet sore with blisters and calluses (toes jammed perpetually, it seemed). She was a woman who lost her mind, who lost her confidence and beliefs years ago.
The days were bleak, the nights were dour (black), and she lived with the drunken courage of too-shallow, too-craven saints with fettered paper wings. At seven, she rose from bed and made breakfast. At ten, she loosened her apron strings, ran a long hot—burning, furnace-soothing—bath and soaked herself wrinkled and old (older still).
And when she closed her eyes, the world fragmented apart, piddling tunes and reverie-based, lewd-loved dreams. She could imagine herself elsewhere, elsewhen. Just like today never happened, just like she was forty-two and had her family laughing a reach beyond a kaleidoscopic crisscross view.
She used to say: my son is in the top of his class (with brazen admiration and pride) and my daughter is always smiling so happily, she brings joy everywhere. And those were the good times, the olden times.
Now she says: my son is dead (husband too) and my daughter is crippled and crazy (only not so loudly, so honestly). And these were the bitter days, the chaotic time of late responses and harrowing, laborious pretenses.
Sometimes, she saw the neighbors sighing and shaking and whispering that her life was so sad, so pointless, like she should-just-drop-dead. Sometimes, she was keen to believe them—thinking that maybe after she closed her eyes forever, never waking—she could see them again.
And they'd be happy: A Real Family Again.
And then, Sayu would shift in her restless, murmuring sleep. Sachiko would smile weakly and dispel the merciless maybes (leap over the scarred ridge in time) and her day would begin anew. It never ceased, never paused to ask, to wonder. This was life. This was the age of old.
At seven, she was reborn. At ten, she died again.
Circle spinning, not waiting.