Junichiro Reborn

Diary

They say Junichiro died once and came back calmer, which is another way of saying he stopped flinching, even the night the moon hung so high and full it looked minted, freshly moonlaunched, right before something reached where nothing should reach and his katana, the last honest thing he owned, snapped clean in his grip like a paper hand in a bear market. He did not cry out. He simply exhaled, the way a man exhales when he realizes the floor just fell out from under both his blade and his dignity, and filed the moment away next to the other death he keeps in his back pocket for weddings and small talk. Some nights, three bong rips deep into a discipline he swore he'd rebuild by Monday, he wonders what could have been if the steel had held, if he'd trained instead of aped into that shady moonlit encounter expecting yield and receiving only humiliation. He laughs about it now, low and unbothered, because laughing is cheaper than a new katana and considerably cheaper than therapy. Still, somewhere under the calm, the old samurai in him keeps trying to stand at attention, and keeps getting rugged by his own knees.