Memory-Nagasaki, Grandpa and Me-

I found a small poem written by 13-year-old Hiro. (perhaps 14?)

Back then, I was a confused, closeted boy wishing to get out of my island.  The island with blinding nature and suffocating people…(so I thought then)

I wrote most of the poem with my broken English that has not been fixed much to this day…

I was studying English which was the crucial part of my escaping plan and that is perhaps why I wrote the poem in English.

Maybe it was because I believed that no one would understand?

Maybe it was simply easier for me to collect my pubescent mind that way?

The poem is about my grandfather who passed away around the time I wrote the poem.

It is not one of those heartwarming ones, as I did not have a good relationship with him for some reason.

He didn’t talk a lot and I didn’t talk to him much either, but in the rare occasions we did, he talked about the war.

It was the only times we mildly agreed on something

Here is the poem. (I first wrote it 15 years ago and have been editing little by little ever since)

———————————————-

Kids

I didn’t like my grandpa

I was six when his son passed away.

My grandpa liked me.

He thought I didn’t know anything.

I didn’t like my grandpa

I knew enough when he was not nice to my mother.

My grandpa liked me for my innocence.

He thought I was too young to know it.

—————-

It was 75 years ago.

My grandpa was young.

Older than 6 but young.

It was so bright but dark, he said.

He saw deaths.

Wars take away innocence, he said.

Deaths change people.

My grandpa liked me for not knowing.

He didn’t know that I then knew what he learned 75 years ago.

What he lost 75 years ago.

I lost it too, when my dad passed away.

Deaths take away innocence.

——————-

Now I walk on the street.

I see a boy crying.

Crying for his mom. He fell.

I see his dad, waiting for his wife.

I smile at the boy. I smile at his dad.

I see a little girl, humming to the song of her own.

I smile.

———————-

The river was black, he said.

People were in the river.

People cried for water, he said.

It was hot.

Wars kill people, he said.

A bomb killed a city.

Kids couldn’t stay innocent, he said.

————–

Grandpa lost something when I lost my innocence.

His son. my dad.

I didn’t like my grandpa.

My grandpa liked me for his not knowing.

Innocence is not knowing.

Were you then, grandpa?

Wars kill people.

Deaths take away innocence.

————

Grandpa smiled at me for my innocence.

I smiled. I smiled for his innocence.