We found the only cherry blossom tree in Tokyo. Out of season. A clerical error in nature. Took a photo in front of it, proof that something improbable once happened and was immediately archived.

I believe in symbols. I have always received them in excess: a wasp sting on my wedding day, the name of an archetypal lover from my past flashing on random entrances in my hometown, a stray dog absorbing itself into my dress at night. Life communicates with me exclusively through props.

An argument in public. This felt rude, given Japan. Watching the other walk away with both sets of keys, dissolving into Tokyoite wave of businessmen. As I watched, I stood still and remembered being locked inside as a child while my mother gardened. I watched her through the window while she waved with her strange gardening tool. I cried. This is when my personality formed.

We negotiated. Nothing was resolved. Held hands like a ceasefire.

Either/or, I thought. Regret is bilingual.

“What the fuck is a shabu-shabu restaurant?”

It means swish-swish. This should have been reassuring.

The restaurant was empty, which made it intimate in the wrong way. Our table was a pot. The menu refused English. A waitress communicated only through movement. Meat arrived endlessly, unapologetically. Raw abundance.

I knew—abstractly, inconveniently—that something worse was loading for me. Symbols were forming. The raw beef was watching me.

The two of us, simmering politely.

There were no instructions. You cook it yourself. I lowered the meat and greens into the broth and watched them collapse. Red became grey. Everything becomes manageable eventually.

I made a vortex and laughed. Briefly.

By the third shabu-shabu restaurant, I was fluent in swish-swishing.

In Japan, trains continue running even after a body interrupts the tracks. There are announcements. Apologies. Delays measured in minutes. The day resumes.

Shabu-shabu continues the same way. The broth is kept at temperature. Ingredients are lowered, retrieved, consumed. Nothing is stopped. Nothing is named. The violence is precise and evenly distributed.

Lower. Wait. Remove. Eat. Nothing. Exceeding. Its. Allotted. Force.

I did not know when I agreed to this. I only know that I participated.

Outside, the city absorbed us without comment. Inside, the pot kept boiling after everything had been taken out. What remained clung to the sides—threads of meat, disintegrated leaves, a film of fat that could not be skimmed away. All that remains is softened matter left behind, overcooked and unavoidable. It had lost its shape, its usefulness, but not its presence. The smell grew heavy, faintly sweet, faintly rancid. Anger rose at first, sharp and bodily, then collapsed under the effort of maintaining disgust. Eventually, even revulsion exhausted itself. The pot continued to simmer, indifferent to whether anything inside still wished to be called alive.

With a spoon, I am turning you away.
With the weight of my finger, I sink you to the bottom of the pot.
With a sharpened nail, I scrape you away until you no longer exist.

Swish-swish.