Author: Naomi Tanaka
When the morning train rolled into Kyoto Station, the mist still hung low over the tracks. I watched the passengers rush past; businessmen, students, and a woman in a red coat holding a single sunflower. She reminded me of my mother, who used to wait for me at this very platform when I was a boy, her scarf fluttering in the wind.
I had returned to Kyoto after fifteen years abroad, drawn not by nostalgia but by a letter. It had been forwarded from my old address in San Francisco, a letter written in my mother’s handwriting, dated two months after her death. Inside, a single sentence: “Meet me by the Kamo River, where the cranes gather.”
I thought it was a cruel prank. But the handwriting was unmistakable, and something in me needed to go.
By dusk, I reached the riverbank. The sky was a fading watercolor. And there they were. A pair of cranes standing motionless in the shallows. Between them lay a folded piece of paper weighed down by a stone. My name on the front.
I never told anyone what it said. But I stopped leaving Kyoto after that.
