Goodbye Tsugumi

by Banana Yoshimoto

Everyday life had never really made much of an impression on me before. I used to live here in this little fishing village. I would sleep and wake up, have meals. Sometimes I felt really great; other times I felt a little out of it. I watched TV, fell in love, went to classes at school, and at the end of every day I always came back here, to this same house. But when I let my thoughts wander back through the ordinariness of those cycles now, I find that somewhere along the way it has all acquired a touch of warmth—that I’ve been left with something silky and dry and warm, like clean sand.