I stood at the top of Uchiyama pass as rain drizzled overhead— The Chinese Sparrowhawk observatory fielded no bird viewing, but that wasn’t why I wanted to go.

I wanted the bird’s eye view of my situation—

The frogs croak in the rice paddies at night. The summer heat creeps in like the many-legged bugs whose names elude me, if not their presence.

Yesterday I watched a Japanese Marten blast up a hillside like a runaway train. A massive fish kept leaping out of the water in the Toyo bay. The sunshine did its best to dispel the latent melancholy as I struggled to understand how I felt about hearing about a terminated pregnancy a year ago. I heard last weekend— nearly a full year after it happened.

I had thought my heart had taken an awful beating this year. At times, it felt as if I was paying back the interest on a lifetime of loans.

After hearing the news, I drove back down to Izuhara and cried.

I wept knowing there was nothing to be done. That the smart decision had been made, and that as ever, we continue forward. But I wept— because something that had long been an out of reach dream had become a reality without my knowledge.

There was no panic or deciding to be had— it had been decided for a year. And I know the weight it carries, not even being the one to carry.