Geisha Death. END

The room was warm and she was still pink in many places. Like her great body was only sleeping. Like when she was still sleeping in the next room so many damn years ago. When she was just father's maid, and when she taught me to read words. When she was, what this family's dead women weren't able to be. Before she almost bore a child for the tattooed stranger, and taken into his clan, before she, as they say, "lost her virtues" and got those tattoos, in his gambling den

I could still remember that night, before she left, when I was but 7 or 8, couldn't remember,
I was watching the foams of the crushing waves beside that seaside cliff. And I saw her coming to it and hid, right beneath a thorny bush, choking with tears on her swollen face. She was so naked and bruised, her clothes torn. And though I didn't know it then in words, I knew she wanted to die, so I leapt out before her shocked eyes, and her hands trying to cover herself and ran to her bare legs. Begged her, weeping, to live on.

Now thinking back, I was not sure if any of it was good.
She comforted me, and promised me no such silly thing was going to happen.
Then...she was sent off.  She almost bore a child for the tattooed stranger, and taken into his clan,
Before she, as they say, "lost her virtues" and got those tattoos, in his gambling den.
Lost everything, and back beneath the two of us, and my blade.

I could still remember what she said to me earlier today, in the cold morning air.
A look of peace upon her aged face, forever immune to life's snares,

I could still remember her cold hands lifting mine, and squeezing back, then raised it to one of her naked breast, letting me feel
the heartbeat and the wonder beneath.

"I'm glad it was you."