The Phone Box at the Edge of the World

by Laura Imai Messina

fragility does not reside in things so much as in flesh. An object can be repaired or replaced, but the body cannot. Perhaps it is stronger than the soul, which once broken can remain so forever, but it is weaker than wood, lead or iron. Her refusal to acknowledge this meant that she didn’t, for a single moment, perceive the danger she was in.

we’re trying to get our shadows back.’

Everybody had heard the voice of the young woman working at the city hall, one hundred metres from the sea, who hadn’t taken a moment’s break from broadcasting the tsunami warning through the loudspeaker, the repeated command to run up hills, climb to the highest floors of reinforced concrete buildings. Everybody knew that even she hadn’t been saved.

Thousands of people, every year, went to Bell Gardia to speak to the people they had lost. There were many like her, those left behind on 11th March 2011, people who came mostly from Ōtsuchi. But there were also those who had lost relatives to illnesses, in car accidents, older people who came to talk to parents who had disappeared in World War II, parents of children who had vanished without a trace.

all she could see was the branches spreading out in the air, expanding in all directions above her. From that angle, the sky appeared full of cracks.

She was convinced that nostalgia had nothing to do with memory, that we actually feel it most strongly for things we have never experienced.

it was the survivors, the people left behind, who gave death a face. That without them, death would be nothing more than an ugly word. Ugly but, deep down, harmless.

If we are destined to lose certain things, wouldn’t it be better to do without them from the start?

Cooked rice (of the Koshihikari variety). Two florets of boiled broccoli. Two cubes of steamed aubergine. A button mushroom. A mince and potato croquette. Two pieces of sanma in soy sauce. A small bag of salmon furikake with Akachanman on the bag. Separate: a little banana muffin, two rabbit-shaped biscuits, six chopped strawberries, one pot of plain yoghurt.