A finalist in the 2006 Writers’ Union of Canada Postcard Story Competition. Julie Paul’s work has been published in the anthology Women Behaving Badly (Paper Journey Press), as well as in many periodicals.

We wake up and make sushi. A dream, to find a boy who knows how to roll the finest Californias, to cone the sweetest temakis, and here he is, slicing carrots and cucumbers into little sticks. I think, my time has come, my ship has arrived, my boy with the toe socks, the book on flower arranging, the pillow in the shape of a cat.

Then I drop the bowl of wasabi on the floor. The cat, his precious Hello, comes over, licks it up, drinks, and drinks water, then throws up on the blue duvet. I try to make the best of it, I say, look, it’s wabi sabi now, the Japanese for beautiful disarray, but no, he doesn’t want to make the best of anything. He wants me to go.

In my replays of this morning, in my revolving stock of daydreams, we instead stay in bed and make messy, uncoordinated love—rolling and patting and marking with B—and then greet the day with cinnamon buns and coffee.

But I have a vision problem: I don’t see that happening. The boy, so far, is unwilling to step into any scenario I create for him. I keep dreaming of a letter from him. I can visualize it in the mailbox, the Sanrio stationary, but visualization just hurts the heart when I only find a flyer for house painting, sticking out its paper tongue.

I fold it: Senbazuru. First crane of a thousand towards one wish.