The geometry of cold tatami

Dear Delyara, My knees are too stiff to sit properly on the floor anymore. For forty-eight years, her tea set sat on the left side of the low cedar table, and mine sat on the right. Tonight, there is only one cup. The neighborhood matchmaker is long dead, the match we made in the spring of 1978 dissolved not by anger, but by a terrible, polite silence that grew until it filled the house like winter fog. She did not raise her voice; she merely packed her small lacquer chests and moved to her sister’s home in Nara. The divorce paper is small, square, and light, but when I hold it, my hands shake with the weight of an entire lifetime spent building a house that ended up empty.