:: Cavity ::

Even listless dog days must manage a bark now and then. These days my nerves are dull to sleep; I feel like a slack-jawed actor spewing lines with thespian repose. But sometimes a different soubrette takes his place, with different lines; haven't I always said this―that life is a master parodist, parroting humour and tragedy with bright-beaked insolence. Puppet me then, you faithless maverick!

M called this morning―his voice was polished and bright. 'I wish you were here!' he sang gaily, always such a boy in his warmth. 'I'm at Nara Park and the cherry blossoms here are beautiful,' he said, dragging out the last syllable, such that even in the blur of the morning, even with my mind still marred with sleep, the vivid watercolours of spring still danced on a splendid canvas: the sky is a vernal blue, tinted with streaks of clouds; the cherry blossoms are coral laughter in the greens and the yellow-greys of springtime trees. Everything rustles with colourful abandonment. You sigh and you breathe and your senses spiral with a thousand joys.

'Tell me what you see,' I muttered sleepily into the phone.

'Well, there is a little boy―'

Fat-cheeked and bright-eyed, chubby fingers reaching out for the falling petals because the swirl of colours is pretty and intriguing―

'And he's running around in his cute little jumper, laughing...a couple is having a little picnic near the river―'

Young love, young lovers. You reach over and brush a crumb off his chin, and he smiles; the wind whispers immortal poetry into your hair, and he smiles; the sun glints like rare diamonds―who the fuck is Tiffany!―off the sheen of water and the world sparkles with recherché. And he smiles.

'Oh god, Jean, it's just beautiful. It's a canopy of blossoms overhead.'

The song of sakura. Japanese poets of old―7th century!―wrote yards of prose and haikus about their national flower. Sakura trees do not yield fruit. They bloom for beauty and not for life; in itself an inherent irony, and in itself a tragic beauty.

'Thank you for sharing the beauty then,' I said, smiling, eyes shut wide.

'Beauty is a postcard when you can't share it―that's what you said, wasn't it?' M giggled. His dark days―tangled with so much hurt and tears and the betrayal of love―must have passed. He can still hear the footsteps―her footsteps―shuffling like wind in the sand, but like I've always known, you can't hurt forever, and one day those dead eyes would be opened to the canopy of blossoms overhead, and you join in their choral laughter, their falling petals like angel winks from a gentle sky.

***

So give me the bitter bread of brandishment and set me free. My dog days are leashed but one day, some day, I will play fetch and never come back.