In the bleakest days of our first winter, colder than we thought possible
for a town this far south, I’d come home from campus in the blue-black
dim of dinnertime, the air pummeling me awake from the daze
of too much to do and not enough to do it on. It was like my childhood
again, almost that poor. Days propped against the pole as the bus
swerved and lurched. Walking up the icy drive, the blurred
orange light from the little apartment seemed to warm the snow,
and I could almost hear the Bill Evans album you loved, and almost
smell the humid heat of nikujaga or pork kareraisu ready on the stove.
I know you thought I didn’t appreciate these simple things.
Maybe there won’t be another winter together. Maybe you end up
back in Japan where you can eat ten different kinds of natto everyday
and speak without thinking and never worry about being mugged.
But I do not intend to forget: that for a time, this is what I knew of love.