Beyond the Childhood Horizon
A child ran across the damp field,
pushing open the half-shut door,
discovering silence in the hollowed house.
The sound of her footsteps, with the falling
raindrops in the wood, echoed in the space.
Living under someone else’s roof,
her chopsticks extended with timid care.
She got used to walking on tiptoes, trembling
with constant fear. Even when she grew into an adult, her heart
shivered still when she saw those faces with smiles.
The world seemed like stage of judgement,
every move, every word observed and measured.
And you were jammed
among a crowd of boys at the classroom table,
cursed and whipped, yet
blamed by the teacher as the instigator.
The bruises on your arms have long since faded. The pain
remains, like a sad old song
whose melody lingers on
while its lyrics have already been forgotten.
Hope was to wait at the community gate, staring
at the cars driving from the way from home,
searching for familiar faces.
Your mother finally came to visit.
At the end of the day, she
tempted you with your favorite snacks,
then left you sobbing on the street, screaming.
That day you learned independence, and came to believe that
bad things would happen when someone offers you kindness.
No more screaming. Only endless waiting, and reunion
for a few Spring Festival days.
Unreachable sky
woven into the void of a child’s dream.
The waiting seems like winter wind in a coastal city, the
fleeting moment of togetherness is a sip of
honey, sweet and brief, after all
the opportunity of having the taste, just to take it away.
Always at dusk, the color of love
shadowed the blazing horizon,
far, spinning, receding.
This is a page written
in a private language. Every stroke
the weight of shadows.
Each syllable the vibration of the unspoken words.
Gazing into memories is to peer into a stifling well,
trapped there, a child is lost,
eagerly staring still,
toward the direction
from which the cars are approaching.
*
Chloe Yue Zhou is a poet and a translator currently living in Shanghai. She is a member of the Zhuang ethnic group, a minority in southern China. Influenced by Zhuang culture, Chinese traditional and Western poets, her poetic contents and style are diverse and cross-cultural. Her work has appeared in Moonstone Press, Tin Can Poetry, Shot Glass Journal, the Henniker Review, and elsewhere.