Lisha Zhong

You tell me about your mother, and you tell me about your grandmother.
Their sacrifices, their strength. Their perseverance and their survival.
How it wasn't easy to raise and be raised in times like those.

You tell me that I'm your daughter, with an irrefutable claim.
There's no way to reverse it: it's done and it's true.
Your hair, your eyes - you got those from me.

You tell me to be thankful, to not be born in the year of the Ox.
That my fate is not to be worked hard, to relentlessly toil.
No, you're a Tiger and you hunger, so you take and you consume.

You tell me that I'm your bǎo bèi, that I'm your youngest child.
That you're still watching and waiting, for me to grow up.
But what does that mean and where is the line, the threshold that I must cross.

You tell me you love me, as if it conveys all the complexity.
The nuance and the meaning
of the words you haven't said.
The ones that I yearn to hear, without ambiguity;
in shapes that I could know. So that I might feel the warmth,
and then be set free.

© 2025

On this isle where
melancholy holds me close.
Encompassing and encroaching, 
I will leave it behind at the entrance.
Seeking refuge like a child,
sheltering from their gaze.

Here I shed my weight,
unborn and reborn.
Laying in this cradle of limbs;
These are the rolling hills,
These are the sloping valleys,
the ones which are mine to know.

Where each tender crease and fold,
belies the haunting trace of flight.
And where each creak and groan,
signals the turning of the seasons.
There is no outrunning this time.

So let me lie here a little longer.
while this fire remains alight.
While the water runs and the land thrums,
for there is no returning when it quiets.
Only the ashes that I will carry.

I know I will soon wander again,
and as I turn
faltering,
I worry,
Please be there still.

© 2024