When A Man Takes A Mistress, He

And Then I Became Aware Of All The Magnificent Silk Wrapped Around My Body, And Had The Feeling I Might Drown In Beauty. At That Moment, Beauty Itself Struck Me As A Kind Of Painful Melancholy.

Even Stone Can Be Worn Down With Enough Rain.

Yet Somehow The Thing That Startled Me Most, After A Week Or Two Had Passed, Was That I Had In Fact Survived.

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.

My Feelings Of Disgust Had Been So Loud Within Me, They’d Nearly Drowned Out Everything Else.