Yesterday in Kyoto: sticky, crying, orange flesh, clinging to my flesh, cradling my peeling nails. Not flesh, sorry, my mistake—I dug deeper than that. To speak more precisely, my skin was wreathed in guts. Yes, that’s it, in the cab I was plundering persimmon guts with my left hand, holding the conversation in my right.

You should go see temples (you do not visit, you see? you see, you just see) and go see shrines, and go see statues. None of that big city nonsense, the taxi driver insists, shoving his phone in my face. In Tokyo, maybe. Not in Kyoto.

Much of what he wants me to go see is dead or a monument to the dead. What, though, do I actually go see? For one, a thousand and one Buddhas. All clacking teeth. Giant gleaming brass. Side by side. Some people ring the bell, kneel on the cushion, pray blind. Other people pose and take pictures.

My hand drifts out like a lost ship. It tells me I want to knock on a Buddha. I am curious about the deep-well ring, the vibrations that will shudder my bare feet, but ultimately I lean forward, breathe in the incense with watery eyes, choke back a cough, watch the snowthread smoke drift up and up—but that. That is when I realize I am in a zoo, garden and all. For a moment I pause. In the chill. I marvel at the animals, and at myself, this animal. I note that if the Buddhas were real they’d only bunch up in a neat little line, turned straight ahead, for a firing squad.

Alive, in the streets, cats and tourists. Dead, in the shops, bowls and chopsticks. Of the corpses, only a select few rest on the shelves for some years, bare, eating sun. These we call antiques. Those who buy them we call suckers.

Five years? Five years is not antique. Five years is merely old. I know this and still I buy the chopsticks. I am a sucker but not a tuna-sized one. At worst I am a sardine. Because the chopsticks were dirt cheap! And had four smiling moons! And a silver cat! What a deal. The cashier, unsmiling, unspeaking, bags up my chopsticks and vigorously points to the painted cardboard, thrusting, almost cracking, a nail: Dishwasher Correspondence. The sign reassures me. The sign is, after all, a sign. Certainly I don’t want my chopsticks lonely. Correspondence is good, talk is good, letters are good. My chopsticks and the dishwasher shall be friends. Best friends.

All this I say yet I scarcely know how to correspond, myself. Even with the living. How does one correspond with a cat? A taxi driver? A cashier? This is not even to speak of persimmons. How does one even begin such a letter? Dearest persimmon, today I will take you apart and eat you. No. Dearest persimmon, I will politely peel away your skin. No. Dearest persimmon, forgive me. I like your guts blanketing my fingers, you see, I don’t like your guts in your guts.

One day I will write enough letters to feel something other than animal.