First, there is nothing. Second, there is something, but it’s nothing. I’m not writing anything. I am writing everything. No-one will read it. It will be forgotten. By next year, next month, tomorrow, now. I remember everything. I see you drinking gin by the window. The bottle is pink like neon. Or cherry blossom. As pink as pinking shears. You cannot stay. I cannot leave. We meet in the in between. We part in the periphery. The atomic bomb dome remains. In the memorial mound, the remains are at rest. I don’t remember what you said to me. Hiroshima is a metonym. Hiroshima is the atomic bomb dome, cenotaph and bone dust. Hiroshima is bottles of water on shrines. Hiroshima is the eternal flame. When the cloud is described as a mushroom, it’s organic. When the cloud is identified as Dante’s inferno, it’s literature. When it is nameless, it is man-made. It cannot be insured against. That’s State Farm policy. We walk through Hiroshima Peace Park and you take my hand in silence. The sun warps the brim of my hat. It quiets the cicadas. We leave. We return. We don’t talk about it. In the Hiroshima Prince Hotel, you stand your toast on its side so it doesn’t get soggy with heat. We’re late to breakfast, just edging in before ten o’clock, my hair a nest. You like your omelettes wet but I prefer miso soup and three silver pieces of smoked mackerel. After I pour a tomato sauce heart on your plate, you call me your coddled egg and we go back to our room. You straddle me in the blue of the Seto Inland Sea. I roll you onto your side and map the irregular coastline of your spine. I sleep with ghosts. I sleep in beds with the outlines of others on the mattress. Our memories are redacted and we forget in black and white. I nap next to hollows in the middle of pillows. I am a pillow book. You are the lover. We begin to remember everything.