In Japanese, there are no modal verbs for the future tense such as "will", "shall" or "be going to". All Japanese verbs in the basic form are present and future tense at the same time.
Tomorrow when I came back home
I was written better- the story of myself.
Please, thank you, oopsy daisy fall from
my tongue and into stories of me feeling
everything I didn’t understand, always
trying to be liked, to get a perfect ten,
to make sure they knew my gratitude,
my hugs and smiles were not pretend-
I love you Mama and it’s not contrived-
always please and thank you and
always how do you do? Always trying.
But never learning how to have faith,
how to find the key to confidence,
how to feel all kinds of things that
I could not understand Still trying.
With a pencil, I scratched a star on the top
of a chestnut-coloured piano I couldn't play
unless I memorised the placement of fingers,
their movement, and the sound to go with it.
I did want to be a star when I was little,
but not because I wanted to be on screens
or in magazines. Not because I wanted fame.
I wanted to make people laugh. Aged nine
and Nanny is crying into the telephone,
Mama forgot to pick us up from school,
every letter that fell on the doormat
made Mama cry. Sometimes I said something
and then-- laughing. I repeat the words --
more laughing. Repeat and repeat until
those tears have changed to those of joy.
If there is a way to make people laugh
when they need to. That was the star,
the glow I saw in those people I loved
when they would laugh. Now, with teeth
I strip the skin from words that I’ve known
since I could talk. They don’t recognise me.
The words are heavy pebbles on my tongue,
salt-white, from the wrong ocean. Now I see
a girl staring back from where I should be.
The face in the mirror is meant to be mine.
Is that right? Am I right, or she? Are we?
There are some problems I never solve
like calculation or non-verbal reasoning.
Usually I am good at tests with words.
With people too. They see how I'm scared.
I really can’t tell whether or not it’s me.
Not a body that does not belong to me.
Maybe it's neither of us. Maybe a ghost.
Their reflected voices are dropping stones.
I should have left some space to forget
before all that I was unlearning. I wonder
of the antecedent to provoke my first exit
When I was younger, I could float, float
above myself and look down on the girl.
After the first flight, I did it frequently,
I was often on the ceiling of the room,
sometimes out of choice or in a dream,
sometimes it was the safest place to be.
I pull ribbon from cassette tapes and
unravel it as if I too am going backwards,
rewinding, tracing ribbons like pathways
to follow them to where it all started,
look underneath all the consequences,
find a cause, or a hundred, or none at all.
Then one day I stepped out to look down.
I did not like the girl I saw, I hated her.
I had always known it was myself looking down
from the outside; harmless, like a mirror.
But from the day I started hating her, always
we have been at odds, remaining strangers,
living in conflict. At one time, in the past,
we were locked in a battle to only exist-
a struggle for power to the death- her or me.
Today we live alongside each other.
There will never be peace, but I will live.
I still see myself from above sometimes.
I see an eyesore, an inconvenience, and others
moving around me exchanging looks of disgust,
resentment for the space I am taking up,
embittered by my existence alone. I know
this is irrational thinking, I’ve learnt that.
I know it will not go away, I’ve learnt that.
But I have also learnt that I can live with it,
reassuring myself that these thoughts
are nothing but assumptions and likely
to be untrue, and the only way to be sure
is to ask. In a single sentence- these beliefs,
assumptions, thoughts, they are illusions,
and you cannot read minds, not be certain
of the thoughts that belong to anyone else.
I’m a bundle of unravelled assumptions.
I am a metaphor for lost cause, gossamer,
wrecking ball, thunderstorms in teacups.
At least that is who they say I am, was.
The world is captive, the universe messy.
Yesterday we were blind. It’s no surprise.
When I lift my hand before my eyes
I can barely see its shape. When I try
to envision a day beyond this one,
a dark tidal wave of fog rolls in, so thick
I can’t believe in anything but today.
or that there will be any more tomorrows
that I will be alive to see. Yet each day,
I wake up, time’s tapestry is woven into
yet another loop, tangling threads of time.
I may not recognise myself but others,
even strangers, leave their faces as imprints
in my memory. The way their eyes become
illuminated when speaking of their passions,
that which gives their life joy and purpose-
whether it’s satanism or quantum physics-
the way others’ faces glow, sharing with you
what thrills them; I never forget that.
And others, I forgive. I forgive again and again.
I hand out second chances like the balloon man
at the zoo, even if each time I’m disappointed.
But myself, or whomever my impostor may be,
stubbornly refuse to forgive one another.
I am afraid of tomorrows. I fear the future
lest it be an echo of the past, a deja vu.
a circle we follow to everywhere we have been,
everything we have seen, nothing new at all.
I forget who to be, who I am; but I do hope
that tomorrow remember me, even if I don’t.