Wordless Winter · Dazaiosamu
Ward Corridor
Across from me, a short male doctor is asking a fashionably dressed woman patient of sixty how often she gets up at night“Twice,” she saysMy mask, soaked through with sweat, begins to slipThe battery indicator on the tablet before me begins to blinkThe lighthouse in my heart likewise begins to sway, casting a sheen like a moan in the darkThe sullied white wallsbring before my eyes a Christmas night in Harbin years agothe streets then were emptyand my heart knew a boundless sense of lossfor no reason at all, I knewknew it without even having to explain it to anyoneI breathed a sigh of reliefthen an enormous one, simply because there was still some food left in my stomachLast night before sleep, I talked with several pillsabout the shapes of throats each of them likedOne of them, quite embarrassed, told me“No one has ever drunk me down”making me blush as well Before me the mountain wind howlsThrough the long black tunnel; ahead lies a lonely snow countryIt was only just before this secondthat I learned my own summer had already ended