菜の花 in the city
a thin line of yellow blossoms grows along the embankment where the limited express runs north out of shibuya station. nobody planted them. they returned this year, as they did last year, as they will next year — small, stubborn, perfectly indifferent to the city.
Brassica rapa var. nipposinica
— collected: shibuya rooftop, march 2024
the train passes every twelve minutes. the flowers do not notice. there is a kind of quiet rural prefecture inhabiting the gap between the rails and the chain-link fence — a pocket of yamanashi folded into shibuya's pocket.
屋上 fields
a rooftop garden, six floors up, just below the water tank. soil in plastic crates, herbs along the parapet, a single row of rapeseed sown by a tenant who left two summers ago. the flowers came back without permission.
Brassica rapa ssp. oleifera
— collected: setagaya rooftop, april 2024
the elevator never comes here. you take the service stairs. the door at the top is heavy, and when you push it open there is a sudden gust of warm tar-smell mixed with basil and rapeseed and iron from the rusting railing.
alleyway 春
behind the noodle shop on nakano street there is a crack in the asphalt where rapeseed grows out of nothing. the owner has never weeded it. it grows ten centimeters every spring. the cooks step around it when they take out the trash.
Brassica rapa alleywaensis
— collected: nakano backstreet, march 2024
the alley is too narrow for two people. it is filled with the smell of dashi and rain on concrete. above, a single fluorescent tube hums behind a fogged window. the rapeseed glows under it like a small electrified sun.
nocturnal 花
at this hour the city slows but does not stop. the convenience-store light at the corner of the block stays on. the rapeseed beside the trash-collection point holds its yellow under that light. it does not sleep — or if it sleeps, it dreams in fluorescence.
Brassica rapa nocturna
— collected: corner of nakano-dori, 02:40 am
in the hour between the last train and the first, the city is composed almost entirely of amber light and small yellow things. taxi-roof lights. vending machine glow. nanohana under the trash collection sign. the whole city becomes a low-burning bulb.
手紙 & stamps
on the desk by the window, three letters from rural prefectures wait to be answered. each stamp is a small yellow flower. they were sent by a grandmother in yamanashi, an old classmate in saga, a stranger in hokkaido who once shared a train compartment with me.
the desk is wood. the lamp is brass. outside, the city. inside, the letters and a small dish of pressed flowers that have lost their pigment but kept their shape. i write back in monospace because that is the only typeface i know how to keep slow.