Missing: Yumi Itō

Abstract

Missing: Yumi Itō Tara Kun (bio) There’s something I’ve never told you, Koji chan. In the mornings when you would unravel the bed linens from between my fingers you were pulling tangles of riverweeds from my hands. When you would chase my knees away from my ribs you were floating me to the river’s foamy top, like a dishonored katsura. The fall would last until daybreak, until you released me, until you let me be found. But that was just a dream. When the fall finally came, it lasted only long enough for a prayer, to give thanks for the wind at my temples, no time to admit fear. And Koji chan, I wasn’t afraid. You know, they are right. It is not the fall that kills you. I pressed my lips into my knees and welcomed the water like a child being born. I never could dive like you. My lungs devoured the river, oh, how long they had been waiting for this! Shh, shh, Ko-ko. I danced with the current, weighted by this nature, down, down, until the mud greeted me. So cold and soft on this old skin. I spent my first night there, then another, but I couldn’t stand to be without you. I knew you were looking for me. The bugs in my belly were eating slowly, and I said, “Faster now!” They obliged, their tiny legs tickled at my heart and when they finally had their fill, air crowded my heartspace and there I was once again at the foamy top, your dishonored katsura, to be with you. My love. Koji awakens. His breath is labored. He once imagined a sweet seed planted in his core at birth. On his wedding day the flora overtook his chest, sakura petals feathering from his fingertips with roots grasping for Yumi. But now he leaves a trail of sour petals at his heels. He inhales and the breath traverses damp thistle that has overtaken his lungs. A salty stream navigates his vertebrae and crowds at the wispy hair on his lower back. His bones crack as he rises out of bed to unlatch the window. He strips off his wet T-shirt, hangs it on the windowsill, and returns to the worn mattress’s edge. It takes three hours for Yumi’s voice to become white noise, so he’s put to sleep once again. It’s noon now, with the sounds of children laughing and basketballs against pavement. He turns to his side and squeezes his eyelids until the bridge of his nose gets hot. She’s here again. [End Page 355] Ko-ko, please, will you go to the harbor to pick the fish up from the market? I’m so tired this morning. I will meet you at the shop for opening. Koji pushes his head deeper into the pillow. “Yes, love. A minute.” He peels open one eye and takes in the silhouette of Yumi on her side, knees tucked, hair in a gray braid down her shoulder. Her shoulder rises and falls with her breath. He reaches out to touch her elbow, but she dissolves into dust floating on a sunbeam from the cracked window. He buys sixty pounds of seafood — tuna, rainbow trout, prawn, sturgeon, salmon. He loads the buckets into the back of his van onto cold blocks that rest on a blue tarp. He drives the eight minutes to their shop, taking turns carefully not to tip the buckets. By opening, he is laying the fish over ice chips at the front end of the shop. Yumi is pricing apples and singing to the radio. But when he walks over to kiss her ear, she is gone and the apples are bare. ________ She was first gone on a Saturday. Koji woke to an uneven bed, so Yumi must have been on her morning walk. He ate breakfast alone by the window. Every child, mother with a stroller, teenaged boy that came into the window frame was Yumi, but then it wasn’t. His plate in the sink, he left on her walking route. Everything that she once loved became a...