From “Chronicle of Drifting”

A trip to Kyoto. I wear a mask and read Snow Country on the train, feeling disinfected and happy. The alert is set off and the train stops in the middle of a rice field. The jingling of my apartment keys in my pocket seems to say this is our home, where is the door. A man sitting opposite me takes out a banana from his briefcase and peels and eats and keeps on reading. Outside, a sun-freckled farmer glances at us, then keeps watch over a bonfire where he must be burning leaves to fertilize the land. The man opposite me is mesmerized by the farmer. When he wipes the window with his finger, the field enters his forehead, leaving in him a flame. I stay empty, a blue outline.

A stray cat in an alley in Yotsuya. I had no food but I made a gesture of food inviting the cat but she didn’t come. The locksmith there was wonderful, taught me how to fix my apartment key, which had been bent when it got too close to a kerosene stove at the train station. He reheated it with a burner, until the key glowed in front of us, and he used pliers to unbend it, like setting a broken tail straight. The cat in my head cried in pain, but I patted her to be quiet. Went home with a bag of strawberries, lettuce, oysters, but my head was full of dry things. Someone walking outside. Voice of a sweet potato seller with a shy trumpet. I can’t make music, not being a piano. But as a child, I kicked sand into the ferns, making the sound of light rain.