Raincoat and Gumboots
Fiction by Cassidy Sakakibara
After the Rain by Théodore Rousseau, Courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington
As a child, the relationship felt so simple—train spotting, fingers tracing the velvet folds of a Shar Pei’s neck. I wore gumboots and yellow raincoats even when the sun was at its zenith. The photo is framed on the mantle—rosy cheeks and doe eyes. They contrast with your easy nature, gentle smile, and soft gaze. The next image is at odds with it. My hollow grin hangs over your glassy stare. The distance between photos is both inches and years. From time to time, you talk as if we live in those raincoats and park walks—the wrinkles at the edge of your cataracts loosen—wondering momentarily just where the tiny hands and fat tears went. I warble a reply and quietly wonder who I’d be if, when those tears had fallen, down narrowing cheeks and teenage years, you’d been there to catch them.
Cassidy Sakakibara is a Japanese-Canadian author currently studying at Kwantlen Polytechnic University in Surrey, British Columbia. Cassidy writes reflective memoirs, fantasy and fabulist narratives around her mixed heritage and both the grief and euphoria it brings her to exist in the ethos of being Canadian.