Light in a dark forest. A dream that wouldn't let go.
Eight million gods. Even in things you overlook.
On waiting two years for a knife, and what arrived.
On the night a village tried to burn down a shrine.
Made from wood that breaks axes. Named after a girl.
Prayers chanted on this mountain for 1,200 years.
The calendar nobody follows and the world forgot.
What hot water and strangers teach about being alive.
Cold water, mulberry bark, a thousand-year gesture.
Four hundred years of the same street, unchanged.
On the island where the trees outlived history.
