to cloud water, mingle with skin. Mildly waterlogged,
rice swishes out liquid. I try to prevent slippage.
Tipping the bowl, I dam the rim: only a few grains escape
the seal of my palm. Tap water sweeps them downward, into whirlpool
of drain, through channels of subterranean pipeline, starch
circuitously surfacing. I repeat, recall my grandmother’s rice dispenser,
rising to height of three-year old chest, behold cream
and green gohan grainery as Grandma beholds her gohonzon.
I select a number, carefully, from the tiny slot machine. Wait
impatiently as one, two, three, or four cups spill,
the resonance of a tipped rainstick showering my eardrums until
the last plunks signal me to transport
the grains to their ceramic conduit, rinse and ritualize this offering
placed daily by Grandma before gohonzon.
She massages beads of her Juzu as I massage beads of rice:
chanting namu myoho renge kyo,
ignorantly imitating her graceful fingers, lacing
beads like a cat’s cradle, I hum in solidarity
words connoting only a peculiar blend of incense,
cigarette smoke, and Chanel Number 5. This blend I inhale
every time I clutch her pillows, peer into her jewelry box, press my face
to her towels—the only high I need
to retrieve what is no longer her
body, spilling like grains of sand
into a slowly graying river,
current punctuated by roses. Long stems streak water
clean, strip toxins, settle silt. So that every time
I wash rice, my bowl is a paddy,
where my grandmother, hunched in muck,
carries nieces and nephews on her back, knees bearing weight
into and out of mud, the way my fingers massage in
and out of rice, grinding arthritis into joints, stratifying
starch and arsenic, leaving stray grains to linger on my nails
the way leeches linger on her ankles, suctioning their lips
to her veins, strong blue channels that support nimble fingers
as they knit happi coats, fold cranes, choreograph chopsticks, dig
trowel in and out of the damp dirt, pump fluids
beside an oxygen tank,
deep sea pressure pressing her lungs like an iron,
unable to smooth the wrinkles wrought by years of cigarettes,
toxins seeping in and out of each breath as her long fingers clutch
mine, before memory swallows
her into open ocean, trans-Pacific, back to paddies,
rivers, mountainside, where her essence
floods onsens, soaks into pores, emanates
from the softening starches that steep my face in rice steam,
measure breath to gentle murmurings of rice cooker:
the remnants of this ritual I sustain.
