A narrow alley in Tokyo
Reaches out and beckons you in
With the soft red glow of lanterns
And the aromatic assurance of
A mouthwatering meal
you won’t find anywhere but here.
The night shimmers with pungent promise
In this little lane unchanged, untouched for decades:
The sound of sizzling skin and seared flesh
The scent of sublimely chargrilled chicken
The smoke suspended lazily above the street
Voices chatter gently
A bottle clinks
fizzes
sip
aaah
“Oh my god, it’s so cute, take a picture of me!”
Ojisan stands guard behind the counter,
His creased and crinkled face
Focuses fully on this, his vital vocation.
And the coals and his practiced hands
Infuse the meat with something
Indefinable, indescribable, inimitable:
The taste of late-night-Tokyo,
The taste of forgetting your problems,
The taste of work does not exist anymore,
The taste of nothing exists outside of
This moment, this laughter, this lightness of being,
And everything is right in your world just for right now
A plate slides
sizzles
nibble
oooh
About the Creator
Jenifer Nim
I’ve got a head full of stories and a hard drive full of photos; I thought it was time to start putting them somewhere.
I haven’t written anything for many, many years. Please be kind! 🙏
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More stories from Jenifer Nim and writers in Poets and other communities.
Where there's Art there's Heart
Here's a stupid thing: I adore art, but I start to panic whenever I step into a gallery. In the one place I should be at my contented best - surrounded by walls teeming with creative expression - I fall apart. What ought to be an enriching experience, tacitly designed to facilitate the exploration of human empathy and perspective, is for me an overwhelming purgatory of anxiety that compresses me to the point I cannot breathe. At the same time, I experience a sense of extraction, as though my head is being prized open to create a hole so big my sanity could evaporate. Somewhere between these two opposing forces of vice and vortex, I feel myself dissolving in a stream of panic that makes me want to cry; and I feel so daft feeling this way, that all I want to do is run for the hills.
By Caroline Jane3 days ago in Humans
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