Sakura Sakurada Mother Here

I finally cry. Would you like a different interpretation—for example, a poetic haiku sequence, a fictional dialogue, or a character study for a story?

She died last winter. Quietly. In that same single room. A cough she ignored for too long, then a sudden stop. sakura sakurada mother

I touch the trunk. It is rough, scarred, cool from the morning rain. I press my forehead against it. I finally cry

People see the photo on the altar—her at twenty, beneath a torrent of pink blossoms in the garden of the old Sakurada house—and they sigh. How delicate , they whisper. How ephemeral . They do not know that the day that photo was taken, she had just walked twelve kilometers from the city after the trains stopped running. That her sandals had broken, and her feet were bleeding. That the smile she gave the camera was the same smile she would give bill collectors, landlords, and the social worker who asked if she was sure she could raise a child alone. Quietly

She turned to me. Her eyes were the color of the bark. “I named you Sakura so you would not have to choose. You can be the blossom. I will be the trunk.”