The Yellow Bucket

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I think I have lost a lot of objects in my life. A scarf, a necklace, an earring . . . I accidentally dropped them somewhere and never found them again. Every time I lose something it simply hurts at first, but later, an odd image comes to my mind: an octopus nestling in a yellow bucket under the sea. This bucket is something we lost one day in summer, when my parents, uncles, and aunts took their children to a river. I was little and did not know how to swim yet.

I clearly remember it was a nice sunny day, but I do not quite remember what we had been doing before the incident happened. Probably we played by the river, had a barbecue lunch and played every game we could come up with. Then, we sat by the river, feeling content and a bit tired. So, it is not a surprise that no one noticed that a small yellow bucket that belonged to one of my cousins had been left unattended and swept away off the shore. It was only when the bucket reached the middle of the river that we realized that it was missing. The kids, including me, got upset, and I vaguely expected that one of the adults would be able to fetch it for us. However, they told us that it had already drifted too far away from the shore. Trying to console us, one of them added that the bucket would become the house of an octopus when it reached the bottom of the sea.

This was the moment when I learned that there are places we can never reach, and that there are some things we can never retrieve, once lost. I was left in awe by a simple realization: I would never see the bucket again. The yellow figure became smaller and smaller and finally disappeared over the horizon.

I do not know what became of the yellow bucket in the end. Someone might have picked it up before an octopus made its home in it. I will never know. Anyway, the image of an octopus in a yellow bucket has been etched in my memory as a symbol of lost property. Every time I lose something, I remember this small incident and imagine that an octopus happens to find the stuff I have lost and treasures it.

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''Megumi Sakata comes from Yokohama, Japan. She moved to New York in June 2021, after living for four years in London, U.K. She studies at the New York Public Library’s Stavros Niarchos Foundation branch. Sandra Ham is her ESOL teacher. Megumi Sakata’s first language is Japanese. She would add “music” as her second language. She loves playing music with other people and believes that music has no borders.