I feel the sun scorch my skin
as I see summer through
the mirage on the street.
Cicadas screech from trees,
as I fan my sweaty face
to release the heat.
Mosquitos buzz around
to prey on my sticky skin,
waking me up from hypnosis.
Suddenly,
a shadow swallows me,
blindfolding a new born day.
The sound of whirring approaches,
chasing away the people
screaming and running like ants.
I look up to find
a swarm of metallic giants.
The familiar whistling
of Hanabi that fills the summer sky,
shooting through the darkness
with a tail of light.
The fire flower blooms above us.
This time, the whistling
shoots down on us,
deafening my ears,
pressing me into the ground
of dust and broken pieces.
The siren yells
at the top of its lung
urging us to run
for our lives.
Everything
in monochrome -
I am inside of the house
with the roof about to fall down.
I see collapsed houses
with the people trapped in
others’ cross-fire.
From the cartoon
Barefoot Gen appears
in school uniform and geta.
I am seven,
in my school library,
picking up a think book
with the blood orange cover.
Browsing manga inside,
I carry it home in my bag
with a zoo print.
As I am further into pages,
I see the planes
and the fire eating people.
He takes me back to
the H-island, haunting me
with images of an big apple
suspended in the air
and a child and a mother
hand in hand,
dragging their burnt skin
in search of water.
Graveyard ofFireflies –
the little girl
with her cropped hair,
carrying a tin of candy drops
while her mother lies in a shelter,
wrapped like a mummy.
I stare at the bag
that carried the book home.
The images invade my head.
My mind is now
a battle field.
I throw away the bag
in the hope of exorcising
my curse.
With the word war,
my mind sees
those images
and my hands shake.
The mushroom cloud flashes
the image of the dome
with its bone exposed.
I staple the pages
of textbooks, pasting
paper over the images.
But every summer,
they come back to me
with screeching cicadas
and buzzing mosquitos,
waking me up from hypnosis.
On certain days,
I look away from the TV
and cover my ears.
I want to be
out of the country.
But sometimes
even in my sleep,
I am taken back
into the field,
in black and white,
alone.
