Your notebook was my only clue – it was tucked safely in your bag, left on the platform when you stepped in front of the train. You deteriorate with each turn of the page, diagrams and photographs defaced with manic handwriting.
1651 to 1873 c.e., 200,000 killed
crucified, beheaded,
piked, burned at the stake
I retrace your steps through that strangled neighborhood, both its knees in the grave already.
Past the temple where they used to wrap dead prostitutes in straw mats and dump them in an
unmarked hole, gravity draws me towards the station looming over the ruins of the killing floor.
rotting in the summer sun,
wild dogs feast, the corpse
becomes the cadaver, dissected
You wrote that the Jizō at Kozukappara spoke to you, offered you his hand, but for me he is
merely stone. I wait for him to run me through with his pewter staff, hold me skewered over the
fire – I did ignore your calls that day. Shimmers of heat blur my vision, and your mandala comes
to life. Yoshiwara girls and office ladies, bar hostesses and single mothers, all struggling to stay
afloat in the vast pool of menstrual blood. Above them Nyoirin Kannon, dropping sutras into the
churning muck. She has your eyes, your smile.
I stumble through the ticket gate to stand in the last place you stood, by the fourth door of the
fourth car. The burden of history bears down on me, an endless recursion of lifetimes in which I
am doomed to carry your weight upon my chest. The sutra in my hand curses me with the veiled
threat of its blessings – you have shown me that hell has always been on earth.
the gates are open and
there is blood on the tracks
– Shane HEALY