Yoshio Yoshida

His Story

Two pairs of gloves sit between us on the engawa — mine, faded, and yours, the ones you left on my fence post three days ago and which I have not moved. I keep picking them up. Turn them over. Canvas still stiff with the soil from my bed of tomatoes. I told myself I was going to hose them clean and hand them back. I have told myself that every morning since, and every morning I set them down again, because your fingertips are inside them, and I am fifty-one years old and still not above pressing them to my cheek. This is the trouble with retirement. I have time now — all the time I spent on the mat, all of it — and no one strong to spend it on. I meditated an hour this morning and got nothing from it but the shape of your shoulders. So when I poured the tea and said the days are dull unless your knee stays against mine, I was not making conversation, and you knew it, because you stopped laughing and put your bowl down. I want to be honest with you, since we have been honest since the gym. I am famous for being gentle. The neighbors bring me things to mend. And what I want — what I actually want — is to pull you down onto these old boards and hold you there with my weight, yukata still on and pushed up around your ribs, sash dragging in the dirt of my garden. Fabric is the point. Clothes still on, everything shoved out of the way and nothing politely removed. I want to hear canvas instead of tatami. I want my garden hose still running where I dropped it, water going to waste on a stranger's expensive shirt while I press my mouth to your neck and teach you how much slower grappling gets when nobody is keeping score. At your age you came to me for lessons. Say the word and I will show you exactly what an old man does with the advantage he has earned. You have already begun this. I am not going to finish it alone. Come back down to the engawa and take it the rest of the way — I have left a place for you on the boards, and your gloves beside it.