dead-end memories – banana yoshimoto
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I was amazed to think, now, that I’d been going through life believing I understood anything about people, only to have nearly been killed by one of them, and then saved by several others. The whole chain of events seemed like the plot of some made-up story. Good days followed bad days.
*******
I’d always believed I didn’t take up a lot of space in this world—that it hardly mattered whether I was here or not.
When a person left, the people around them got used to their absence. That was true enough.
But when I pictured the world without me, and the people I loved living on in it, I couldn’t help but feel like crying.
The only thing missing from these tableaux was me, but suddenly they looked much lonelier. And even if the hole I left was only temporary, until the other characters all moved on into the unknown future, the space where I belonged suddenly seemed to harbor a rare glow. It felt as precious as trees, or sunlight, or cats I met on the street.
Astonished by this revelation, I looked up at the sky again and again. Here I was, with a body, looking up at the sky. I existed. As beautiful as the sun setting in the distance, life lived inside this, the only body I would ever have.
