The Book of Tokyo: A City In Short Fiction

by Michael Emmerich

Not every woman wants to pair up with a man. Not every woman who is single is looking for love. Not when there is so much in life that is richer and more beautiful.

You need other people, to give your own life a sense of purpose. No, that’s not it. People just want to be close.

Like water falling, it is only after a person’s feelings and relationships are in place that the shape of things is clear.

Every morning, just by opening my eyes, I express this. ‘I am living in this world.’ It echoes throughout my body. ‘I want to be alive still.’ ‘I want to experience the world.’ Just by blinking, I accept the world.

Imagine if semen with tens of thousands of sperm gets squirted onto the ground in the shape of a human body. You know, like that white tape that marks a dead body in a crime scene. I think that is what men are like – men are just these hollow entities.

“the lightness of unbearable being,”

loving someone was not a matter of gradually getting to like them more and more, but that over time it became impossible to dislike them.