I'm too late for 6:00 pm.
I texted Ms. Grasshopper.
Can I push back 30 minutes?
Hurry, hurry. My mind is on the run; my body swims in the deep morass.
Ms. Grasshopper arrived at 6:30 sharp.
I need to be at Omote Sando at 7:00pm.
Getting on a cab, getting off the cab,
It takes five times as long as a healthy person.
The building is just across the pedestrian overpass and
It is absolutely beyond my power to cross the overpass.
The taxi went a long way round to the venue.
Here we are, finally.
Held from the both sides
I managed to climb down the steps
Only to find that it lead to the wrong building.
No way. Gasping for air
I had to go back to the start.
The mere 6 steps of the stair is a valley of fear for me.
My left foot won't rise even one centimeter.
My back and my hips have no muscle tone.
I only move jerking like marionettes.
Until now I believed I could walk more steadily.
What's wrong with my body?
Able-bodied people started to gather around me.
"You can stand up."
"Hold on to my shoulders."
"One step at a time."
"Won't do."
"How about a piggyback ride."
Conversation goes.
I have muscular atrophy just as I have been told.
I can't live the life of the robust. It's my reality, the reality of my life.
The conversation attests to the fact.
Do I have to accept? From when? To when?
I am the weak, the amyotropic.
I can't do this, I can't do that, I can't do anything.
I was hauled down in a wheelchair.
With the rolling of the wheelchair in the air, my mind started to atrophy.
I cause troubule to others.
I shouldn't go out.
In a solitary resistance, I decided I would never go to places where people gathered.
The life style of the myotrophic is that of confinement at home.
I thought. I felt.
The lecture was going on about the lifestye of the youth.
The seminor as usual. Nothing has been changed.
I have changed. I realiezed I did not belong to the able-bodied anymore.
The lecture went straight over my head.
The subject should have interested me.
It slipped out of my mind what the able-bodied youth wanted and gave up.
The atrophy of mind was progressing at a fast pace.
The nightscape appeared pitch black,
Reflecting the mind.
Gentlemen at the seminer pestered me for after-party.
While I declined, I was not free to turn on my heel and leave.
So here I am at the after-party, drowing my disgust in drink.
A patient with atrophy of muscle and mind hitting the bottle.
Even if I poured out my heart, nobody would ever understand, I was sure.
I ate and drank to vent my feelings.
The fried chicken tasted delicious. The delights was available even for the atrophied mind.
Ms. Grasshopper laughed carrying me on her back.
I smiled coyly and then laughed.
I got a smile from Ms. Grasshopper, who had been a stranger one month ago.
Let's put the atrohy of mind on the shelf for now.
Something good will happen during the three day weekend.
I'll give it a shot
To believe in time to wait for love.
My life style is to extend time to wait.
Poem by Maria Franki
Edited and translated by J. Ujiie
©2011
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