Hibakusha

A summer day, a solitary bomb, a single instant; and Hiroshima was transformed into a raging inferno and a hell on earth. Countless precious lives were tragically lost, and even those who somehow managed to survive have lived in constant fear of radioactivity's grim after effects.
- Takeshi Araki -

You asked me once about your father...

It was a surprise one summer Monday.
Walking to work, I saw him ahead of me.
I craned my neck skyward to see his face:
a Little Boy confessing he was made just for me.

He grabbed my arm and pushed me down.
The grit of the sidewalk tangled in my hair.
The waist of my pants pressed into my lower back.
And even in the early hour, the sidewalk heat burned
a criss-cross pattern on my skin.

He hunched over me, his outer thighs
spread my inner thighs.
My temples were clamped between his wrists.
He lowered his head so his bottom lip
slid along my left ear.
And even in a summer morning,
the yellow whisper lit up the sky—

Surrender.

His word tore my shirt open.
He wet my breasts
with clockwise swirls of his tongue.
The goosebumps around my nipples
swelled into blisters filled with white puss.

And all around, the people pretended not to see.
But I saw their dislocated shadows painted on the ground.

I turned my head away from the vermilion
throbbing between my legs.
The glass of shop windows
were crying tears of ice for me,
and the buildings reached to me
with crimson beams of pity.

When I looked up, he was gone.
I touched my leg where he'd finished.
His thrusts had rubbed my skin loose:
flaps of my leg hung like rugs
from a clothing line.

I propped myself on my elbow
and felt a drop of water from the sky.
I opened my mouth to catch the rain
only to taste charcoal.

You asked me once about your father.

You asked me once
why you look different
from your brother.

You asked me once
to tell you
how you were born.