The first week of my visit, when I was still reeling
from the price of shrink-wrapped apples,
you came home dying to explain how the Japanese combine
"word" with "temple" to make
"poem." Your students had shown you.
Each morning while you worked, I hung laundry
on the line and readied your lunch at noon. I didn't mind,
because free time was your deliberate gift.
We had met in Prague and I believed,
the way I would believe
a knife at my throat, that I could love no one
who hadn't shared that city with me.
Our plans were as precise
as a rice paddy's balance
of water and green shoots: you would stay, finish
your contract, meet me in England
in a year. I did not know then
that decisions can land inches from my naked
eye, like sharp tree limbs. Maybe
what your students said about female heat was true.
Women can't be sushi chefs—their passionate nature
cooks the fish. Those long days
folding shirts and filling journals
gave me time to wonder if our love fit
the way the Japanese believe geta should:
slightly too short for the wearer's feet.
The morning after I flew home,
you taught verb tenses in Fuji City: she will go,
she is going, she has gone.