remnant 残滓

remnant

merciless time.
fading memories.
this bitter longing.

...

残滓

容赦ない時流。
蘇らない思い出。
この苦い憧れ。

— Dean Bowman

About the Work

Author's Note: This poem was written in the shadow of passing time. It emerged nearly whole, without preamble—just fragments of fleeting memory and raw emotion. I didn't try to elaborate or soften them. The grief felt concrete, unresolvable, and language seemed barely able to contain it. That starkness became the form.

Inspiration: The piece arose from returning to Japan after a long absence—the shock of finding home transformed beyond recognition, my Showa-era memories colliding with Reiwa reality. This forced me to confront memory's erosion: how our most vivid images blur and betray us, how longing sharpens in absence. The Japanese version followed instinctively, not as translation but as echo in another register—one that offered different gravity to the same ache. Together, they complete the circle of lost futures.

Process: I didn't revise much. What mattered was preserving the emotional compression. The hardest part was choosing whether to present English or Japanese first. In the end, I let the temporal weight of "remnant" take the lead—it felt like a footprint in dust, the last mark before disappearance. The Japanese version required several attempts as "time" and "fading memories" proved elusive to pin down, but eventually found their proper weight.

Original Release