Inspired but a real love connection and actual relationship break down in Tokyo. Men can cry when its real only though, in my view. Still a but embarassing. This was published in France online on  mgversion .

TEARS

Run. Push through this crowd, too many people: typical horror of the rush hour in Shinjuku. Tokyo should be the city that never sleeps, not New York. No sorries, no samisens- polite excuse me’s. He walks, no not walks jolts, bruises his feet with the force, and quickens the pace.

Face is full of frowns verging on grimaces. He keeps re-adjusting his strap belonging to the man-bag. It’s heavy, full of books. He rushes into the subway, dazed, angry at the whole crowd for dawdling. Quick! There’s a seat. He sits down and takes a deep breath.

Then it hits him in a spilt hair second, as if he was on the tracks run over by the train and not in it. At first a quivering lip, brushed away by a hand wiping across his face. Teeth bite his lips. Tongue rolls around. He looks forward, pretending to be proud with defiance in eyes.

It’s no good. The heaving has started. It’s like he’s about to spew after too much sake. That chest is rising and falling, not evenly but in a rhythm which is disjointed. His face feels like melted plastic falling apart and dripping...Tears gush from his eyes. Now his face is red and looks full of pain and buried remembrance resurfaces, jolting out of an unconscious prison: shaking all over in a bodily earthquake; a warrior without armour: crying being a real man.

There’s no reason to wipe away the tears. They flow non-stop. A tidal wave is released. He knows why. It’s him, the one: the only one-lost forever, thrown out of his life with a shout and hand pushing him out the door and out of his life forever. If only he could roll up into a foetal position, shake as well as heave and sob. But he doesn’t.

Even when letting it all out, the molten lava of his psychic core, there is some wink of restraint required.