冥

1
Under the fragile light of the Buddha’s lamp
The skeletons of an infant witness how the world drowned by the islet,
and then been given birth by
tears, tears, tears.

Springtime, white cloth burns itself into salt
I stand at the last salt marsh just trying to find one reason to die.
My only kingdom excludes purity, I endow a hole into me.
Far away an ant knocks through the night sky
and constellations are drunk.
So the quest ends. Return home to boil some rice.
Perhaps only at the other end of my bowl does death ring a sound.

2
When I was 13 or 14, I laid on railways and cried Byzantine purple tears.
None fell to earth, they
patterned like tiles on the bathroom floor.

3
Droplets of rainbow-colored syrup flowed down her cheek.
Could the truth be me, the one actually crying,
or is it the last Buddha’s lamp on this road
had too fallen,
had too went cold.

Continuing the past, we favor a helpless tragedy:
a deity walks into the great blackness. Martyrdom breads madness,
his hands are scorching, I’m pushed into fire.
And before any of us could escape, bustlingly
we all decay in sweetener.

4
There are a million different ways to avoid a drought.
The easiest might be folding up the constellations’ organs.
I stitch my tears into you.
when your vessels are frozen.
One end is land, the other is the ocean.

I eventually let go of every heart back into the black kingdom,
running in vortexes they
cry in their smiles.
Only one pair of eyes is distanced from blackness
One named as death, the other one reincarnation.

By Ziyun Peng

Footnote:
[冥] The dim underworld that people go to after death in Chinese superstition.

Biography:

Ziyun Peng grew up in China. Previously unpublished, she is currently seeking to deconstruct the beautiful East Asian culture and staring into the plights created by modern politics. She loves reading, writing, and feeding her jellyfish.