Iwasaki

i’m professionally foreign, i have made
“being not from here” a job.
i exist on borrowed time, plucked by the government
to be put back when they’re done with me
i am aware of it from the day i arrive
in japan

one of my coworkers
laughs at everything i say
unless it is actually funny
and stares at me, the look of thinking
on her face
when i tell jokes
we work together for two years.

one day on my way to work, i stop at the bank

as I am performing my ATM transaction
I notice a 500 yen coin in the coin drop
I look back and forth for some reason,
then scoop it out and pocket it, finish my withdrawl
head up to work

during the walk the neuroses which compose me
start firing. how will i plausibly deny
stealing this 500 yen from whoever it belonged to
when the police inevitably track me down
to FUCK ME UP.

it’s not like it was on the floor, it was in the
ATM, i stole it, i am a stealer. what the
fuck was i thinking?!
no, no it’s too late now, it’s only 500 yen
still that’s five bucks

i come up with what i did wrong, i shoulda
withdrawn an odd amount of money so my coins would have
fallen into the coin drop and i coulda just
scooped it up like nothing
but i messed up

what if it belonged to the person just before me and they
realized they forgot it and they
were standing right there, watching me take it
“yes officer it was the one foreign person
who used the bank this morning.”

now they know i have it, it is
all over. they are going to
get me.

i don’t know where to turn,
i ask my co-worker what she would do in my situation.
i tell her, you are the only one i can trust
with this information.
i explain everything like a mad man.
i took the 500 yen.
what should i do, here in japan
in this culture?

she laughs hysterically, of course
but this is no laughing matter!!
she thinks for a moment,
then says
i will tell you
how a true Japanese person would take care of this.

she says,
we Japanese believe
that if you take it back to the bank
and just set it down somewhere
it will pass back out from you
into the wild
it will drift away like a floating lantern
you borrowed it for a minute but put it back
so basically it’s like you never had it at all
it was just busy for a while
you will be at peace,
a little smile plays across her face

i immediately fall in love with this woman
i find it the most profound thing anyone
has ever told me, this allegory for life
we are all just borrowed and replaced
tools of the whims of our interactions
i look at her
seriously, with purpose, these beautiful notes
going off in my brain
i have connected with humanity

honest, i
slide it back into the ATM coin drop slot on my way home
to the bank it’s like i never had it at all
i feel at peace with the universe
despite my previous crime
every muscle inside me relaxes
i am free

at the end of the year, my coworker is transferred.
for whatever reason, i am asked to give her farewell speech
for our party a couple months later
in japanese, not english
i don’t know why i say yes
but i look at the paper they’re holding and
my name is already printed on the schedule

it dawns on me slowly, but shockingly
what if just like my coworker
while i’m speaking
every last one of them
laughs at everything i say
unless it is actually funny?
i suppose it would be better
than the alternative,
that they don’t laugh at anything

on the night of the party
i step up to the mike and tell them a story
about how i was a coin thief
and my coworker, the beautiful woman
saved me from the law
i put it back, i put it back

they find it hilarious
and laugh constantly
i’m okay with it, even though it was
obviously a touching story
about how she helped me connect with the japanese spirit
and not all that funny

afterwards she tells me
i gave the best speech
i’m drunk enough to tell her what i feel,
how she affected me so much,
how her advice was so profound
i say i guess we are all kinda like that coin
borrowed for a while, to be put back when
the world’s done with us

she starts laughing like a crazy person
i cannot understand why

i was just fucking with you, she says
i would have kept the 500 yen