Yoshiwara- dying flowers

In their white and bright kimono's they sit down, the purple eri bare and dark against their bare flesh. The girls dancing in their valid cage, twirling gracefully against a screen of softly illuminated cherry blossoms.

Oiran, Trapped inbetween the gaze of the hungry eyes of men and the rosewood of the rich screen that hides their illustrous shadow.
Trapped in their elaborate kimono's with the obi on the front. Caged for their beauty, and the services that money buys and feeds. Not only desire, but also hungering families, miles and miles away from tokyo and Yoshiwara.

The women around her dance , a slow move of the hand, outstretched and pale as if holding a fan. A beckoning motion to the men outside the cage, outside the window..
Men whose gaze need no translation.

"Ansai, I've already said you" Her nee-san starts at her as she sees her concerned face "freeze your body and mind, it doesn't matter as long as you keep your head cool"
The oiran talking to her holds her head high and gazes once again straight ahead. Her lips can no longer form a smile, the soul was ripped from her eyes and Ansai follows her gaze outside. To the workers..
"Up your chest" the woman sighs
"Up your chin" her hand strokes a fan "Foolishly look outside"
Her lips smile as she gazes "Look like a fool and gaze there"
"Gaze...gaze" the woman sighs once more "gaze..."

She swallows, slowly nodding but not understanding what she truly means. Four years ago now.. She listens "To not be chosen is to fall back among the faces in the crowd"
A place where the eye does not wish to see, to live in poverty "Set yourself out from amongst that crowd.." From under her dark eyelashes the woman looks at her "Can you do that to live?"
Slowly something of a grim smile spreads over her face while she looks at Ansai before she once again directs her gaze outside, letting her eyes play over the wicked and poor, the wealthy and shameless.
Their customers and kin in an uncaring world of fading beauty and ideals. Ansai's eyes grow dull and big, shocked and suprised as they meet and interlock with those uncaring eyes. Filled with lust and loathing as the undress and possess in a manner uncanny to her yet to be molded mind.
They enstrangle their desire with their own self-hate as they search what they cannot truly possess when they fill their head with other thoughts, and desires they can never aquire.

4 years ago now.."Ansai-san, why did you so suddenly want to to Oiran-Dochu?" The Oiran Dochu is the parade of high Oiran, the taÿu. High class courtesanes that are cultured and pleasant company. Delicate and elegant, fragile but strong.
The girl in the bed remembers a glorious parade of Taÿu. Oiran on high geta, hovering 15 cm oer the ground. High, triumphant, a vague grin spreads over her face.
"Because" she softly whispered "Oiran-dochu sounds like a "sakebi" of women"
The girl leaning over her next to her dabbed her face with a wet cloth.
"A scream of women who were sold here,
A scream at the people who dropped us here" She looked up
"At the people who look down on us as callgirls"
In her head the parade takes the form of lanterns, the crown, the narrow streets, the smell of poverty and pain and disease. Her eyes narrowed
"A scream at the men who pay us, to buy us in spite of looking down on upon us"

The parade behind her eyes grew brighter. Kanzashi shimmering in the light of illuminated candles and shoji-screens, glistening in a haircut in the shape of a waxing moon. Quivering, her lips moved
"I want to march along a street to show of my naked glance"
she spoke determined
"Watch us"
"Look at us"
"We are still alive- though we were sold, caged, and forced"
"With beauty"
"with elegance"
Her eyes were shining with a vivid passion
"Look evrybody"
"I stay alive as a human however hell here is made up of women's lifeblood-
We are still alive and are able to blossom out into red, beautiful flowers"

Hands shaking into an unfelt breeze, breathing softly, she tells of a world made of their tears. Of punishment and social disease.
"Flowers" she whispered "Drawing ruin on oneself by the stress"
"Dying by the red disease of tuberculosis"
She sighed, her eyes directed on a past or future far away. A place nobody can call her from.