Melancholy of Mechagirl, The by Valente Catherynne M

Author:Valente, Catherynne M. [Valente, Catherynne M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fantasy, Short Stories, Fiction, Japan
ISBN: 9781421564432
Publisher: Haikasoru/VIZ Media
Published: 2013-07-13T20:00:00+00:00

THE EMPEROR OF TSUKAYAMA PARK

When first the word was spoken, I heard:

Tsuki-yama—Lord Moon.

And for me, the moon settled onto a dais, with

sixteen-pointed chrysanthemums in his phosphor-hands,

topknot oiled with seaweed and orange,

his hakama fringed in silver worms

which wove on and on,

flooding the nightingale-floor with silk.

The folds of his sleeves creased blue and black

in signet-shadows, descending like stairs to me,

in a poor, threadbare yukata,

my sallow Western skin protruding,

forehead pressed to his white tatami.

For me, the moon extended a branch of heavy plums

and with well-water eyes forgave my ignorance of protocol,

my botched obi, my hair unpinned and ragged.

When winter came to Tsukayama Park,

it seemed to me that the strange-limbed tigers

of his wall-hangings

rumbled like clouds, and I was permitted to watch

the sparrows spiral up to his ashen ear. Under his cratered arms,

I knelt, and whispered tears into the hiragana of my palm-lines,

obscuring the text with salt and snow.

For him, I was always penitent.

I did not question his rule over the cherry trees, the green tide,

the steam of tea in a glazed cup. I allowed him to stifle

my breath in twelve layers of white silk, to paint me a new mouth,

to fold back my hair in beryl combs

that cut my scalp with piscine teeth. For him, I pressed out my pride,

flat as a river, and bowed my face to the floor.

When summer came to Tsukayama Park

it seemed to me that his voice was the thrust-cry of cicadas,

that the wind beat drums of star-hide, that I had

learnt the angle of the closed mouth

well enough to pass for one of his own.

But in the midst of my prostrations, my rain-hymns,

the steeping of my braids in inkwells,

I heard a woman laugh at me.

She said that the word was

Tsukayama—top of the hill—nothing more.

And for me, the moon was excised from the sky.

I had no grace left but my face flattened into sun-cracked dirt,

no patron but the feet of a false moon,

evaporated into plain grass and a stone stair.

My kimono dissolved to water,

and the sparrows turned in shame

from my nakedness.

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