USER #030066

[passio]

Black-as-can-be cats arrive a-pair,
Up on a rooftop, a plaintive eve,
And on the tips of their pointed tails hung
A wispy crescent-moon, looking hazy.
'O-wah, good evening,'
'O-wah, good evening!'
'O-wah, o-wah, o-wah!'
'O-wah, the man of this household is bedridden.'

A poem by Sakutaro Hagiwara, that I heard once from a friend. It seems things have calmed down since #FFFFFF arrived, but I wonder if that's the end of it.

How is everyone's literary analysis? I think we should be prepared for more mysterious messages, and maybe there's a way to prevent it before it gets bad.

Comments

#E07CA0

[thriftea]

that's really good advice! it's important to stay sharp.

do you know many more poems? i think some of my friends miss having new things to read, so i hope they see this. even if it IS a little sad :(

[passio]

It is sad, isn't it?

I don't know if I know anything else in its entirety, but... I think those would be sad, too. It might be for the best. Do you know anything happier?

[thriftea]

don't think like that! that poem is kind of gloomy, but it still made feel something. that's what poems are supposed to do, right? so if you have more you should definitely share them with us.

and if you do, maybe i can find a happy poem just for you. someone around here has to know one! :)

[passio]

[ you have so much faith in him, ochako... ]

Hmm.

'The little one is ill, the little one will die.' Do you know that one?

[thriftea]

i don't think so. let's hear it!

or... let's SEE it, i guess!

[It can't be that bad, right?]

[passio]

[ YOU HAVE SO MUCH FAITH IN HIM........ ]

I don't know the whole thing. It's a little longer than the one I posted. I remember the ending, though.

'He was good. He was kind. He never whipped the wind nor squelched the mud unless it was necessary. And never did he retire into a deluge. But he will die. Is it, then, nothing at all to be small?'

[thriftea]

[Hmm. There's a significant pause here, because she's determined to give this her all.]

that can be sad, but it doesn't MAKE me sad.

when i read it, i think about all of the good things that the person did while he was still alive. if he was good and kind, then he must have helped lots of people, right? and those people will remember him even after he's gone.

so he's not small just because he's not there anymore. the things he did made him BIG!

[passio]

[ dextera pauses too, surprised by the way she's approached it. he doesn't remember the poem in its entirety, no, but he remembers the way he felt when he first read it—that it doesn't matter how beloved someone was, they will die. all people will. ]

...that's a nice way of thinking about it. There were other lines in the poem too, about how many people he helped.

But I can't help but feel sad. If he was so good, why does he have to die?

1/2

[thriftea]

[Ah, but that question. It brings all sorts of unpleasant memories to mind, but one quickly rises to the very top. His death wasn't her fault—she knows this—and yet carrying him to safety, wishing that she could do more while knowing that she couldn't...

...It's not something that she's worked through quite yet. It is, in fact, something that she tries very hard not to think about, but now she's revisiting it for the first time in a long time.]

i don't know. but it makes me think how heroes put their lives on the line to protect everyone. the best heroes do it because they think it's the right thing to do. it doesn't matter if they get a big reward or if they get hurt. the important thing is helping.

it doesn't seem fair when they die. but THEY don't think that! to them, even if they just saved one person then all of it was worth it. it's their time to go and they... go.

so maybe that's what makes them good.

[She types all of this up, still thinking of that one person, and hits send before she can change her mind.]

[thriftea]

[Only she's hit by a sudden wave of sender's regret. Wow! Dextera didn't ask for any of that, so she shoots off another quick reply.]

i'm sorry! i didn't mean to type so much!!! it was silly.

[passio]

[ sender’s regret or no, she did send it, and dextera considers it with all the gravity that he would if she hadn’t told him to forget about it.

it sounds like ~*~trauma~*~, and he’s no better equipped than she is to handle trauma, but in a way... there’s a camaraderie in that, too. ]

It wasn’t silly.

I think you must be incredible, to think about it all like that. I admire it.

[ there’s nothing he can say, when he’s struggling with his own certainty of being a bad person—but he wants to assure her that she’s fine. her emotions are fine. ]

[thriftea]

[Well, the good news is that he's probably going to wake up one morning and find a) a happy poem and b) something nice to eat both sitting on his doorstep! Because holy cow, she feels so bad for sending that mess to another person. Split-second decisions are The Worst.]

that's nice of you to say! but it's not anything special. i was just trying to do some literary analysis, i guess!!!

thank you for sharing your poems. :)

[And now she'll just be floating up to her ceiling. Woohoo!]

[passio]

[ don’t go......

he wishes there were more he could do for her, having seen this kind of insecurity laid out before him like this, even if the forums help hide exactly how sad or embarrassed she is to express it all. ]

I’ll try to think of something happier for next time.

I hope you’ll tell me what you think of that one, too.