Edinburgh

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After he dies, missing Peter for me is like swimming in the cold spot of the lake: everyone else laughing in the warm water under some too-close summer sun. This is the answer to the question no one asks me.

The time that I think will be the last time I see Peter, isn’t, as it happens. There’d be one more to come.

My grandfather lost his six older sisters to the Japanese during World War II. Gone and never heard from again. Comfort women was what the Japanese called those they stole for their soldiers. They were girls, though.

My grandfather tells me the first stories I hear about what a great animal the fox is when I am a child. Foxes rescuing children in danger, foxes with magic rings. Korean name, Yowu. Years later when I read in college about how the fox is a demon in Japan, I think of him. I ask him about it when I come home and see him next.

Anything kill Japanese, my friend, he says. Fox, bomb, Chinese. Anything. My friend. He’s a gaunt now, hollowed, a silver-haired hat rack, beautiful in the way of anything missing something else. He has a picture of his mother and sisters on his wall, beautiful women almost identical to each other in the manner of old families. Of his sisters my grandfather has one left, born after the others had been stolen. He’ll die still missing these sisters who used to run along the beach tossing him back and forth between them.

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