January 19
May I die in spring, beneath the blossoming cherries, on that full-moon night of the second month.
Mountain Home Collection (freely rendered)
Listening mode
May I die in spring, beneath the blossoming cherries, on that full-moon night of the second month.
If you were allowed to wish for your end, you probably wouldn't name a day but a season or an hour: a particular light, a warmth, a kind of stillness. Hardly anyone would choose something unfamiliar for it. The wish reaches for something you already know and have lived through more than once.
What sounds like a directive about the end is really a confession. This time is so familiar to you that you would leave even the very last thing to it. About death, the wish says little. It reveals, rather, where you feel safe enough no longer to need to hold on to anything.
Only, the chosen time comes back. Every year it arrives, and every year you pass through it and remain. So the wish goes on not being fulfilled. Perhaps that makes the time heavier, perhaps lighter. Sometimes you look more closely than usual, as if it were a rehearsal for something whose date no one knows.
Then it is over. Without noticing, you carry the wish into the next year.
