Water Water

Whenever I close my eyes, I sense the tides inside of me. Though as quiet as water, I retain the forever-pulling force. I need an estuary. My energy soon becomes visible in verses, flooding the infinite realm of the page.

Splash. Betrayed by a friend. “Still, someone is waiting/Is washing all the lonely lies with leaves.” Splash. Away from home, studying in another city alone. Wanted to talk to my father but never knew how. “Now you never hear of my seventeen,/ But I don’t know how to blame a man /Whose messy hair, grumpy mood/And wordy heart/Descends in his daughter.” Sometimes I’m very aware of the sand at the shore, feeling lost about where the future leads. “My blood, like migratory birds/flocks towards you.”

Waves wash in and out of my bloodstream, driven by the internal gravitational force of my heart. Natural impulse blends with awakened desire. My emotions run through the canals of life like streams, composed in words. The desire for words is the desire to live, to feel, to love. Born in China, I’m the daughter of the Eastern rivers. The origin of my culture lays in my poems: tranquil yet forceful, powerful yet non-destructive. I don’t merely flood, I irrigate. My water nourishes the agriculture of life; a land of emotions sprouts, blooms, and flourishes. Writing in English, I flow with the inclusive nature of water, making the land afar reachable. On my heart’s nautical chart, I learn to mark my territory, set my route, and spread my biodiversity. “In my water-based life, you exist in the form of salt.” I write. When my heart beats hard in life, I feel the energy accumulate, and I write. Crimson waves, that’s what I possess. 

I am my own water. My heart pulses, and my waves undulate.