What I Threw Wide Open Once, Still Has Not Closed

Michelle Zhang

I don’t want the roses to bloom once more, don’t want you to return.
The wind keeps blowing, the spring quickly vanishes, again it is summer.
The wind that has swept across my village has swept across your city;
The river that has flowed past my village has flowed past your city;
But how fortunate, the grief that has broken me has not broken you.

Miss you, sometimes. Like this evening
When I was eating a cold meal in the kitchen, I thought of you.
In a split second the tears rain down my face.
That our distance is immutable cannot give me pain;
That, if we never cross paths again, then we’d go die our own little deaths, 
cannot give me pain either;
In this strange mortal coexistence, 
even this loneliness cannot pain me.

Honestly, can’t really say what there is left to grieve over.
In the infinity of spring, I leave behind my reflection
And raise up my praise, and delusion.
I’ve tied the knot of life in dead-knots over and again
And then after the entire process, I have slowly, slowly untied it.

But that, in this world you & I coexist still,
That is still a miraculous thing.