She would follow the tearful till she wept for herself.
One day after she had left and I was suffering dearly by those effeminate pains which are lost among men. Even Aki, even Natsu, who were genderless entirely, or so it seemed, to me. Aki our voyeur and Natsu our savior, no neither could take that tributary stream of fresh blood from the small of my wrist and turn it to rose.
For I had sliced through my skin trying to trim glass for a frame. Those days I made frames while I tarnished my own. It was back-breaking work which it pleased them to see, me, and I wondered where was Yoko when you needed her. Where was she.
That day all the light passed as I lay spine flat to tatami. I was alone in the dormitory and hiding visibly from Toby, and I was dreaming of my mother Yoko who knew the blood of a child with a look in my eyes. My eyes, child eyes, we bless the girls who run from safety just to prove they are still able to break. Once in the evening Toby came in while I was painting and told me I ought to be working like I agreed to do and I said okay I will do that but I said it in that awful haste that gave him the power to tell me, no, stay resting, you need to rest.
In the evenings before Yoko had left us, I had seen her stare curiously at Toby, with a look of distanced wonder. Like she could lay on tatami for ten years and he could not tell her, work. She was working. She was working magic in her eyes. She wrapped our wounds in yomogi leaves but it was her fingers that did it, her soft, matured body.
After he left me laying, I painted a five-legged beetle which spent the day stiff beside me until I eventually left. For all I knew, we were wounded for always. The cut scarred in the shape of the sunsets which we watched from the top of the storm wall. There was a sun and the waves. I remembered when Toby would measure the clouds for me, and the sky, and I would tell him of tragedy with a spark in my eye, and I would know inside then how sick I'd been, and how I longed for Yoko's return.
When we were together we made love with our eyes, so the world was easy, a visual dream. All I needed touching me were tender leaves and fingertips, and the female kind. When we were apart, I would close my eyes in the empty spaces of the hours to imagine. Haru, her son, in my arms in the onsen, Yoko in the onsen, Yoko by the sea. She was, to me, always by the sea.
Watching her, gracefully, I was pleased to explore with her seven-year-old son, who was silently in love with me. When they returned four weeks later for the festival, he met me at dusk by the early, salvaged stage. His hair was cut. I said hello when I wanted to scream God bless the ones who carry love in their eyes. I thought he might have fallen in love while he was away so I worried. The moon rose and we held hands.
I thought, where was Yoko.
I loved them both.