About Crows

Orizuru

46 O r izu r u At the kitchen table, you wince when taking a sip of the cheap red wine— telling me, in the clearest way you know, that it’s too harsh. I’m always a few steps behind, as I correct each mistake and refold toward an already-lost perfection. In the extra minutes before the buses arrived, my sixth grade class folded cranes to send to an imagined memorial in Japan. The assignment worked, if the purpose was to place in the mind of each child a distant city of suffering: of fabric burning patterns into flesh, of mother and child—hand in hand— becoming silhouettes of ash on a sidewalk. Nagasaki, your neighbor city, is beautiful, you tell me: a city of white, surrounded by ocean and hills. Like San Francisco. With its own history of fire. For the time I lived at 32nd and Geary, my fireplace remained empty. And now I wish I’d filled it with these white paper birds, in memoriam, or, at least, as a series of small steps toward a peace I didn’t know how to get nearer to. The proper way, you say, is to leave the wings unfolded, so that the wish will stay within, and with a needle, thread the tiny hole in its belly, push the steel through the empty space inside, and pierce the thin back, until every one of the thousand is linked, unwished. Tilting to the side on its one bent wing, as if leaning against yours for support, my crane is lined with unnecessary creases. You can’t decide whether to keep it there or pull away. ...