Ittadakimasu

Lately, my chopsticks always seem

to splinter when I break them apart.

My friend looks up from her meal to

my maimed utensils and says, “That’s

bad luck, you know,” but I can’t be

concerned because these days

I haven’t been dreading anything.

In Kyoto, the waiter handed me a

fork with my meal, smiling as if

he’d been waiting all his life for

a gaijin to walk in and use it, and

he didn’t listen or didn’t understand

when I told him in my broken accent

that chopsticks were fine.

In Kyoto, I had nothing but bad luck,

the festivals vanished when our train

pulled in and left their masks on the ground

in their hurry, and it took us hours to find

Gion because my friends were too stubborn

to pay for the bus, and Gion was not filled

with geishas and odango but

soundless temples that were locked up tightly

but somehow the front entrance was lined

with perfectly positioned shoes,

and everyone was cranky and sniping

at each other so I wandered to the gift shop

at the top of the hill while they

tossed yen into the vented box and tried

to burn incense without matches,

and all I could find were trivial things

like the faces of Tokugawa’s guards

on origami paper until some monk

showed me the charms hanging

by the register, and he knew each one

in English: safety, love, health,

until he reached the green one and

struggled for a minute until he sheepishly

told me, “Shiawase.”

Happiness.

I would have asked him if it had

the power to ward off a utensil’s curse,

but I didn’t know how to make him

understand me.