In the restaurant,
most unladylike,
she sat on the floor,
legs crossed,
ate noodles and what
she later discovered was seaweed.
Funny how it didn’t seem to matter
that she nibbled the inedible
and it tasted fine.
But, more than the food,
it was the country
she was chewing on
and not that briny fauna.

She got by on a diet
of colored lanterns and rice fields,
communal baths and speeding trains,
geisha houses and pretty girls
with eyebrows painted
at the most popular angles
and even the occasional plaque
remembering Hiroshima,
solemn but not angry.

In that restaurant,
despite her cramped posture,
she felt more ladylike
as the courses came.
Miso soup –
exquisite.
Tsukemono –
yum.
Even now, she respects a people
who can eat seaweed and smile.
And she likes to think
that if they ever dropped the bomb on her
she too would remember…
years beyond the explosion,
but in a healing way.