Sixty years later, one keep asking himself what if....
The time wasn't right, the world wasn't right, the cultures in collision, but...our hearts didn't know about it.
Sixty years, and I still wonder, what if...

My dear Natsumi-san of Shimaguni
my secret garden’s Byasa butterfly,
softest dream made of pure velvet,
a cocoon of illusions embraced by.

We didn’t said sayonara, that’s final,
but jaamataashita were the word that
told each other, “see you tomorrow”
even if both we knew that it was a lie.

You, a delicate kenji, a golden jewel,
me, the gaijin, a foreigner from afar
falling in forbidden love with a jasumin
of all the jasmines, the virginal one.

Sixty years after and I still wonder,
where are you now little Natsumi-san,
that my heart can’t forget, nor my soul,
after all, we never said a final goodbye.

Stabbing pains when hearing others
remembering their few summer nights
that will no return, like those belonging
to us and now are buried in the past.

Dear Natsumi-san, many kuyashinaki
tears of regret felt yarusenai from my eyes,
like water drops on the forged Katana
trying to calm from within a burning fire.

A soldier and a seventeen years old maiden,
we were from two different worlds, apart,
but ours was a love born from the wanting
of having no one else to care for our lives.

Our Tetsujin, an eremite wise man in Kobe
said that “a happy flower never could have
an existence with roots inside a gray stone”
I was that gray stone, he was so very right!

This few words are to say, Farewell my love,
can’t forget you, I never could, and that’s why
never sayonara, that final without return word
because I was always returning in my mind.