August 6, 1946
Jalina Mhyana
Dedicated to the Hibakusha
There's a grave
for my mother at Hiroshima
Where you can still see
victims' shadows printed
On the ground where they burned
Like photograms, or old-fashioned
Silhouette paintings
Survivors write letters of condolence
To victims at Auswitch -
People marked with numbers.
Women who wore kimono on that day
still have the flowered designs
photographed onto their aged flesh
branding them Japanese
That fall my father moved us
To the country
Where people didn't ask about
My thin hair or the crimson spotting
Of my arms and face
Today, August 6, 1946,
the first anniversary
Of my mother's passing,
I pick branches from the cherry blossom tree
In our yard - the blossoms
have since retired for the year
But they were my mother's favorite
Reaching high for each branch,
The sun on my back,
I am face to face with my own shadow
As it twists and grabs,
wrestles with the branches -
beasts with many arms dancing
Against the tree trunk
This silhouette with arms
Reaching for the tree -
An anonymous version of myself,
could be anyone at any moment -
A child catching a ball overhead,
a father throwing his baby in the air,
or my mother hailing the bus
that never brought her home to me
the day her shadow outlived her.
© Jalina Mhyana
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