Yu Miri

I never carried any photos with me, but I was always surrounded by people, places, and times gone by. And as I retreated into the future, the only thing I could ever see was the past.

The waves roared.

I stood alone in the darkness.

Light does not illuminate.

It only looks for things to illuminate.

And I had never been found by the light.

I would always be in darkness—

Time had slowed to a sluggish crawl. I walked faster, but each step plunged me deeper into the depths of stillness. If time could pass so slowly that its passage was imperceptible, then—is death where time stops and the self is left all alone in this space? Is death where space and the self are erased and only time continues?

I finished my drink while he was talking. Now that I had nothing left to drink, I felt uncomfortable—as if I was naked in front of him,

I was doing nothing wrong. The only thing I was guilty of was being unable to adjust. I could adapt to any kind of work; it was life itself that I could not adjust to. The pain of life, the sadness… and the joy…

at the same time I thought what a thing of sin poverty was, that there could be nothing more sinful than forcing a small child to lie.

I do not think I was especially ugly, but I never had the kind of looks that would have attracted anyone’s attention

It wasn’t that I wanted to die; it was just that I was tired of trying.

Time had passed, things had moved on, yet events I should have forgotten soon after they happened stayed with me, trailing behind me. . . .