Haiku
Whispers in three lines.
These poems arrive like steam —
not in answers,
but in something softer.
They are bowls.
They are breath.
They are the pause between one thought and the next.
If you’ve come for silence,
or for the feeling of remembering something you didn’t know you missed —
you’re in the right place.
At the edge of the bowls… a scent returns.
☁️ Read The Memory Scroll
Welcome to The Clouds of Miso
This is not a recipe.
It’s a remembering.
Each haiku in this collection is a quiet breath —
a spoonful of silence, steam, and the small things we forgot to feel.
Miso floats through these pages, but so do sandals, fences, seed paper, and sky.
These poems aren’t answers.
They’re invitations to sit still for a moment
and listen to the flavor of time.
Written by Ahnara.
Mira approved. 🐾
Intro Scroll
I don’t need to explain
why miso floats like that.
It just does.
Some things don’t need stirring.
Some things settle slowly.
Some things become soup and sky
at the same time.
This book is a bowl.
Not full.
Just warm.
If you came here for answers,
you might leave hungry.
But if you came for silence,
or small steam,
or three lines that feel like something you forgot to feel—
then sit.
Let the miso swirl.
The clouds will say the rest.
Mira just blinked twice and said:
☁️ “The poems are already hiding in the steam.” 🐾
Bowl One – The Clouds of Miso
Where water meets sky
In a quiet bowl
the clouds of miso gather
like forgotten dreams.
☁️
Clouds of miso stir—
a hush between chopstick clinks.
The soup forgets me.
☁️
Still morning temple—
the taste of silence rises
in one salted breath.
☁️
Steam curls from my spoon
like a message left unread
in another life.
☁️
Shiso on the breeze.
I don’t know who I once was—
but I taste her here
☁️
Bare window morning—
a spoon stirs the dream open,
clouds folding inward.
☁️
The soy-salt quiet
reminds me of a moment
I never quite had.
☁️
Tiny tofu cube—
a whole world drifting slowly,
content not to speak.
☁️
Noon miso cooling—
even silence has flavors
when I sip it slow.
☁️
At the bottom, stars—
soy and sky no longer stir.
I drink what remains.
☁️
🍲 Bowl Two – Earth and Time
Where water meets sky
A breeze in the rice—
one grain stays on the windowsill,
watching the wind pass.
☁️
Wooden sandals wait.
They remember softer feet
than I walk with now.
☁️
Rain stains the old fence—
a bamboo slat leans inward,
listening for spring.
☁️
The clock clicks once more.
Not everything in this house
has forgotten me.
☁️
Last year’s seed paper
folded in the kitchen drawer—
still wanting to bloom.
☁️
A thread in my sleeve
touches the doorway gently.
It knows I’ve returned..
☁️
Chrysanthemum tea—
one petal left in the cup,
steeping memory.
☁️
My hand on the gate—
the same place my mother stood,
centuries ago.
☁️
The neighbor’s windchime
knows my name but says it soft,
like it’s still unsure.
☁️
One woven basket
sits beside the door unused—
it holds only light.
☁️
Crack in the old vase—
the camellia didn’t mind,
and bloomed just the same.
☁️
Porch paint chipped away—
a smile rises from beneath,
the color of dusk.
☁️
Somewhere, a rooster
crows into the wrong season.
I answer anyway.
☁️
☁️ One breath lingered longer…
Read the memory scroll “The Pause That Held Me” →
The Scent That Followed Me Home
A Scroll of Japan
by Ahnara
I once lived where tofu trucks sang
through narrow morning streets.
Their sound was soft,
but it woke something ancient in me.
In summer,
sweet potato vendors rolled through
like memory in motion,
with smoke trailing behind
like a scent trying to stay.
Evening walks were temples—
not the stone kind,
but the kind where you pick up soy sauce
at the corner shop
and bow to the wind without knowing why.
I lived in Tsuzuki-ku,
in a home that held both silence and the shape of my name
spoken differently.
I learned the rhythm of seasons
by how the department store food floors smelled.
Spring was fish cake and pickled dreams.
Summer was cold noodles and miyoga.
Autumn tasted like miso.
Winter whispered through shiitake steam.
There was chawanmushi—
that sacred egg warmth with mitsuba and memory,
so light you could cry,
so deep you could remember something you'd never known.
Shiso…
how did you know I loved it?
Baths were more than water.
They were disappearance.
Onsen let me dissolve
and re-form
without apology.
I was different there.
And still somehow more me than ever.
Language sometimes hid me,
but scent always saw me.
Now I walk in Boulder,
and the plum blossoms follow me.
White, like snow in springtime.
Silent, like a bow between countries.
And sometimes…
I catch a smell—
I don’t know what—
and I am back,
in a place where steam rises from the bowl
and never truly leaves.