LET THE BOW FORGIVE THE ARROW

By Shrike

Summer sinks in sideways the way consequence does– not always the progeny of the action, immediate or even expected– sneaking unseen into the dream forever. Paradise: how I thought it’d be when I put down roots, the first of my blood and bone to see how the sky sets this side of things, drinking up the light you left behind when you folded up your face and left Xi’an for good. You’d know, mā, so I should have known it too: no matter how close you keep it, your shadow slinks to the side when dark goes to light to dark to light. It’s a slow and symmetrical hurt, knowing that what’s happened has already happened– is happening because it happened to you– that I am you because you loved me–  

 wanted to be loved–  

made me so you could be erased or inverted or stood upright  

 on top of December–  

 though the slow turn of the planet tilted you from one world to the next– to finally find your feet, yourself, a way I could bloom through the bitter cold,  though this hemisphere’s too hot this time of the year,  

 and now nobody can go back.  

They say this is home, now– but you know better, and so must I: tangerine dream of prosperity, the turn of my nose– yours– auspicious, mā, the wake of what we left behind, orange horizons, evening’s jam-jar glow, the things I know without needing a calendar or clock, it’s summer, it’s summer, when the showers pelt down to feed all the green and dewy things that survived to push  

through the soil and take a chance at being one, for once. Imagine that: you came all this way, like those slanted knives of light through Xi’an’s smoking winters, to see me sunburned red and orange and red like the persimmons we peeled for lǎolao when her hands gave way and her voice too and she couldn’t be one if she was ever–  

 that’s how it happened: the consequence before the action, cut fruit in your belly and hers, nobody asking why, always how, before you left, the dream of Oceania’s marmalade drip, in your belly, before I sprouted sideways off, tender-young and evergreen, my salad days,  

my mirror, mā, always my mirror, though we’re so different, the way winter in Xi’an and summer here are nothing alike but break our hearts in the same ways, how we know we love, how I love you love me.  

 How many summers will I go without you?  

 Mā–  

 it’s your shadow leading me forward the way mine drags you back, to winter, how it should be, Xi’an, sky a flat, quiet slab of concrete, the haze almost invisible in its immediacy, unseen but everywhere, waiting to be looked for, loved forever, mā, all the way you came across broad mountains and oceans with your face burning open for a flowering sunset. Paradise: the way I thought love was supposed to be, simple and straightforward– how you, like me, wanted to be one all the way up until you hit December and the heat happened and the persimmons in this place ripen famished yellow-orange, because you can have too much of everything, even the 

light. It happened at an angle, not all at once: the hill you dreamed forever of putting your house on and then mine, lǎolao’s smile lopsided through her voice, the life we longed for, the love I left. Mā. Māma. Mā. Will you find a way to go home? You left Xi’an for summer, and I’m fleeing to that coring cold– no use considering why, just how. Mā–  

 how many winters was it before you and lǎolao split apart? How many in her belly? Will I find a way to come home?  

 Can I come home?