The Premonition

by Banana Yoshimoto

It’s not just my childhood memories. There’s something even more important I’m forgetting.

His voice carried through the darkness and seemed to light a shining path through the night sky. Just his tone was enough to reassure me. It’s because he loves me, I thought. And I love him, too. Simple.

Days that were endless, but which you could only take one at a time, with no sense of what was coming tomorrow . . . I still can’t shake it. It lives inside me like a curse or a blessing.”

The more beautiful a night away from home was, the more regretful it made you feel.

“When people see too many of something, it just makes them feel sad. No one knows why.”

It’s kind of tragic, I thought, how we can never completely escape our childhoods.

I’d never known a love before that could blot out the world around it like this.