B r a n d o n S h i m o d a —

Rest House

On the Motoyasu

in Hiroshima

two children, a girl and a boy

covered in colorful tsuru,

swim through a sculpture

of Sadako Sasaki

were they sister and brother

were the tsuru breathing  

can you hear their feathers   separate

the sun

up the wall   

the tsuru

hung off

their arms   like

tails

on the ground  

the ground went

suddenly

down

as they lived  

what were they looking at, suddenly, in

the appearance of this girl and this boy   there

were new

possibilities

for blood   for how it might coagulate

into robes

with infinite folds

arranged in empathetic colors   overlooking a river

whose tide could not remember

the burden it carried to sea

Rest House

The sister and the brother walked

freely

along the river   above the river,

and felt the trees

watching   leering?  

at those who,

by the fact   and the promise

of their being children

survived   threw themselves into

an unrecognizable future

porous   to hide in

spaces of light   where light falls

or

resorbed

into the grief

that constitutes silence

Children   lumped together, licked

by the gentle reclamations of the tide,

fertilized the soil that

broke ground

where nests grow

old

fall apart

Rest House

The girl and the boy   The sister and the brother

with cascades of tsuru

bleeding from their hands

could have been offering

the jagged edges

of the ruins

to the people   

stroll[ing]   absent-minded

through the placid mausoleum

sharp   deliberate,

lines  

all over the bodies  

hearts

beating

like shards

of alkaline walls   toxic molds

that morph into

dust

Rest House 

over time, the girl and the boy

on the Motoyasu

in Hiroshima

became trees  

barbed   so as to protect

their bright

and vulnerable

fruits  

from being eaten

by the wrong

digestive systems

They did not smell   their hearts were small

seeds dropping

into the uterine amphitheater

a code  

underneath the skin

of the water   moving

towards the mountains

where their eldest was

waiting...   wanting

to engender

shade

and peace

staggered   ruined

against the frozen sky,

a root growing upside-down

Rest House

Children, once

they become vegetation

project themselves into

a looser fantasy

of belonging

Permit themselves   or

are permitted

the relics

of burned, broken nights

the wind carries

with it

the beauty, the familiarity,

the equilibrium

of inherited distress

[and] refreshment

now   We are trees now

like alien elevators

loud – lifting   could not  

for the life of me

make myself

out

Rest House

The sky above the girl and the boy

resembled the ceiling of a planetarium

each bulb in the galaxy

eavesdropping

on the progress of descendancy,

and wanting in

They were young

The tsuru were dresses

They floated A song  

trailed

from the river

but quicker

the wax

from the chrysalis

embedded

in the brain

floating over their shadows

washing behind them,

were priests

reincarnated as cousins

I wanted to offer them

my table, my bed

the angelic light   warm,

and many thousands of miles

in an unfolded place

candles   ,   mounted in the lips of lanterns

to evoke the guise of

home  

receptor of space

where a bomb is always falling

without reaching earth

the people arrayed

in their labor, toiling

but [still] able to drink water

.