‘The Red Cape’ & ‘The Quiet Edge of Transformation’
Katherine Matsubara is a British born illustrator and fine artist living in Tokyo. She leans towards the darker side of the world in her work but still allows a glow of hope to shine through here and there.
The Red Cape
The Red Cape hangs over your dresser, catching glimmers of the setting sun as it peaks through your white wooden windowpane.
You walk over to trace your fingers along the silken cloth, your touch sending ripples through its form.
You play and dance with the potential to be held by its warmth.
How would it feel to try it on? Just for a moment? What lies underneath this silken sheath that you crave - the blood-red loving gaze?
Why do you feel a bubbling fear, a discomfort, as the fabric meets your skin? Too soft? Too thin? Hasn’t this been what you’ve longed to embrace?
The fluid acceptance of its form clings to the wounds you’ve been scared to touch. It clings to the places where destruction erupts.
A dark liquid floods your lungs, reminding you of every time you were suffocated, numbed.
Losing breath as the silk grips to your chest. You start to fight, resist, and stretch its edge.
You start to contort your muscles and bones to release what the cape has shown: the softness, the beauty, the love you have not known.
You let go.
Drop to the floor.
Arms heavy, lips empty.
You let go—raw.
Sorrow-filled, you crawl.
To sit underneath the white wooden pane, till the moonlight starts to fill your space.
Under her glow you lay.
Under her gaze you pray,
for The Red Cape to wait upon your dresser, till you’re ready to meet again one day.
The Quiet Edge of Transformation
Sink into sand.
Grow a garden
with a fortunate hand.
Wait patiently for time to arrive— for rocks to decay
with the slow erosion of tide.
Look closer to see
the changing of form
through each breath and stride.
Look beyond the reflection
you no longer recognise.
Return to the middle world
with God at your side.
The God in your eyes
shows the rivers you cried— a vision
no longer disguised.
She makes space
for the self who awaits.
She makes space
for new stories to emanate.
She beams
as she opens to life.
She is free
as she lowers the knife.
Sharp edges
turned from inside,
through flesh
this love can arise.
Her heart finds a place
to enter in time.
To feel beauty in another.
To feel vast space
and discover,
the illusion of a separate other.
All that was needed
was never far.
All that was shielded
becomes a distant scar.
Honey pours
through the concrete you broke through. Melody rises
from the noise
mistook for truth.
Sophia Bourne is a somatic practitioner and facilitator whose work explores the thresholds between body and imagination. She is interested in the depth, creativity, and complexity of our inner worlds, and how the body holds stories often left untold. Her writing, spanning poetry and creative nonfiction, is rooted in somatic studies and contemplative practice, guided by the belief that the body is both a keeper of memory and meaning. She writes to bridge inner and outer worlds, uncover hidden narratives and transform them into new forms of expression, beauty, and understanding.
Substack - @movingsoma
Instagram - @sophia.movingsoma
