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The Flight Of
A Porcelain
Puppet
I remember we took you down to the nearest hospital. We had
seen symptoms such as these in our community – they were never a
good sign. It was winter, and the trees had been transformed from
vibrant demonstrations of life, to bony creatures peering over the
sidewalk.
You got a thrill from the busy streets, you said it made you feel
alive. You were playing around, running in between people and
ducking back to meet me. Your long charcoal hair was obediently
following your ephemeral silhouette, and every few seconds it
seemed, you turned and beckoned me to hurry up and join in. Your
feet seemed to lift off of the ground. You reminded me of a bird,
fleeting and beautiful, soaring across the grey pavement, effortless
and free, a perfect contrast to the seas of people bound by jobs and
duty. The sky seemed to echo the pavement and vice versa, each
with an imitation of the kind of grey found within a storm’s
brooding cloud right before rain. But you played with all the
endearing curiosity of a child, caught in a moment, rarely looking
back and scarcely anticipating the future.
’
A doctor’s diagnosis can always be deduced from their eyebrows.
Our doctor had knitted his together, lines of stress sat upon his
forehead and his lips were pulled into a tight line almost trying to
conceal his verdict. You had acute malignant lymph gland leukaemia,
and had to be hospitalised with only one year left to live. After you
were admitted as a patient to the Hiroshima Red Cross Hospital we
came to visit you for the first time. It felt strange to see your sanguine
face trapped in such an institution, stuck in bed. I kept envisaging
the freedom with which you had flown before we’d ever came to the
doctor, and it felt like circumstance had clipped your wings. You
smiled for us. Through all of your pain, you smiled, with barely a
scintilla of fear, to help us feel better.
After two days you were moved to a different room where you
gained a roommate, we brought you your favourite cherry blossoms
as a roomwelcoming gift and you smiled as though it had teleported
you somewhere else. It was your roommate who told you about the
cranes. She claimed there was a legend in which whoever can fold
one thousand origami cranes will be granted a wish. It was also this
roommate who taught you how to make them. Your wish was
obvious, to regain the life that was being taken from you.
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