Ode to Mochi, and: Origin and Departure

Ode to Mochi

The morning's inexplicable sadness. A vague salty-sweetness, permeating the hours.I sit at the breakfast table with my daughter, eating squares of mochi.The outer shell, risen like the carapace of a crab. Crisp skin and soft, gooey interior.I once read that ambivalence means both very far and very close.In relation to your absence, I feel ambivalent.Though it has been ten years since your passing.I can still see the spoon in your hand, heaping sugar into a bowl. Silky granules spilling over the lip of the dish.The red bottle of Kikkoman, its double-pour spout. As though one might pour shoyu in two directions at once.But not really. Like ambivalence, certain things appear both ways but only go in one direction. Your life, your death. My daughter's birth.Her small white teeth, tearing chunks of mochi from her hand.At the end, the family thickened your liquids with something called Thick-It. Each mouthful, a potential hazard.Life may appear to move in both directions, but in the end, it only goes one way.Pureed foods. Feeble limbs and frightened, disoriented nights. The day's salty-sweetness, a flavor turned two ways on the tongue. Not bittersweet, but umami.Umami as in umai, meaning delicious. As in dashi, mirin, shoyu—the holy trinity. As in homemade Chex mix, seasoned with furikake and shoyu-sugar. That meaty sweetness.Umami, the flavor of nostalgia.Pouring a stream of shoyu, I am both here and there. You are both with us and not. Though, mostly not.Pooling at the bottom of the bowl.The best moment in mochi-eating is when the shell cracks. The imminent collapse.The morning, now laced with sadness. Umami's salty sweetness.Because I will never see you here again, and my daughter, pinching off bits of mochi to share with her baby sister, will never meet you.Tiny morsels, held up for inspection. Is this small enough?The baby, taking bites one at a time, mostly swallowing them whole.

Origin and Departure

After making love, we lie in the dark and press ourfaces to the taut skin of what could be, what spreadslike oil across every surface we've touched, hungry

smudges on headboard, thigh, glass of waterleft on bedside table. The room shifts beyondthe known, lifts into possibility. Unmade one,

you're everywhere—and nowhere. Deep within,I listen for signs of stirring, of some other realmwaiting to rustle into the real. Night turns

like a bone in the throat. We press our bodiesto that other world, swelled against our own,so close we can almost touch it. How clumsily

we fumble, hoping by some miracle to break through.How little we know, facing the void and calling to it,emptying ourselves time and again into its embrace.