We All Know That A Winter Scene,

He Was Like A Song I'd Heard Once In Fragments But Had Been Singing In My Mind Ever Since.

How Many Times Already Had I Encountered The Painful Lesson That Although We May Wish For The Barb To Be Pulled From Our Flesh, It Leaves A Welt That Doesn't Heal?

Couldn't The Wrong Sort Of Living Turn Anyone Mean? I Remembered Very Well That One Day Back In Yoroido, A Boy Pushed Me Into A Thorn Bush Near The Pond. By The Time I Clawed My Way Out I Was Mad Enough To Bite Through Wood. If A Few Minutes Of Suffering Could Make Me So Angry, What Would Years Of It Do? Even Stone Can Be Worn Down With Enough Rain.

I Studied Japanese Language And Culture In College And Graduate School, And Afterward Went To Work In Tokyo, Where I Met A Young Man Whose Father Was A Famous Businessman And Whose Mother Was A Geisha. He And I Never Discussed His Parentage, Which Was An Open Secret, But It Fascinated Me.

Flowers That Grow Where Old Ones Have Withered Serve To Remind Us That Death Will One Day Come To Us All.