Shed Hairs
In the middle of the room sat the most splendiferous anonymous tree, slowly losing its leaves.
Yet as I kept walking closer, I was able to see
that they were not leaves at all.
Instead, at its base, many fine hairs.
*
You look around the room for hairs that have fallen.
You look around the room for hairs that used to be yours.
Used to be you.
*
No matter how long,
I have more of myself to lose.
*
What sort of lucky plum blossom tree
is the top of my head
shaking loose
so many dark hairs across the floorboards.
It makes me lonely to see each one.
I never treasured them enough.
At the funeral of my fallen hairs, I proclaim
Fallen Comrades! We meet one last time
in Time’s ignominious dustpan.
If a beautiful thing is lost, does that mean the beauty is lost?
A hair atop the head is an icon of beauty
but a hair in the drain incites disgust and revulsion.
For the rest of her life,
she can never stop cleaning the house.
Dust
A flake of me flakes off of me and falls down to the bottom of me. Down into the gutter of me. Down into the sewer of me. The crescent of me. Each sensation I have is a single flake that can flake off at any time and not come back. I have a trillion flakes of each sensation. Simply walking around in my body, I shed so many flakes of fearfulness and flakes of epic love. Flakes of sorrow and flakes of laughter. Flakes of my great grandmother’s heart and her great grandmother’s lungs. Oh, I am sorry. As a bottomless breeze blows a scent of cleaning products down into the valley. Sorry if I am not dusting up after myself. If I am gone, it is only because I have left myself somewhere accidentally. Only because. Perhaps because. A wave of dust and a ship of dust and an inch of dust and a cry of dust. Once, when I was sick, I read that dust is everything heavy enough to see, but light enough to be carried by the wind. Reading that made me feel better about not cleaning my room. Years later, it made me feel better about being a person.
***
Author photograph courtesy of Hua Xi
