A Woman’s Life

Soft fingers danced with threads, step by step, sorrowful butterfly 
flapping melancholic eyes rippled above deep-green brook
scarred palms aligned, a dumb mussel, and carefully sewed
pale smile with inane vibrancy

when darkness assaulted too hard
and he slept like a motionless pond
her broken murmurs swirled in drafty kitchen: 
Dear God, Dear God

I clasped myself to repel rage 
when harsh nights engulfed enduring weeps
watched violet dale fading with mournful mist
went out to bring her sallow daisies, withered dew with wet hands

She took me in and put droop-headed blooms in a cracked vase
took out a polished bowl checked the fire stirred the sticky conguee
and opened a bottle of whisky pouring it into a glittering glass
A table crowded with frightened oblations

shivered like faint candles, awaiting gentle hurricane to blow them off
Everything is perfect, she knelt and awaited her backbone, a still servant
I knelt behind her, stubborn head raised like blazing flag
her warning glance massacred my mind and pressed me

lower, even dying beetles stood higher to display malformed alas
lower, her desire to fill my fragile lung with dead bubbles
yet my spine could not bend like a slave warping on gallows
I peeped through fingers and glared 

I saw 
her emptied hair slouching on slim shoulder, lackluster in dusty wind 
bony chest, his negligible trophy, veiled every possible joy
and her breasts, flattened down, bleeding and breathing

in slumber. A dull thud, her man staggered, sustaining
his cumbersome skeleton, a small earthquake on wooden stairs
finding his scattered bottles in the dinning room, with scorching brandy breath
he wended to his throne, a golden spoon to announce his feeding time

I had seen a downy fly floundered in his abyss
surveying and begging for made-up mercy. Yet it would never know: 
A man like him had an empty thorax, no circulation of blood, nor heartbeat
to bring warmth, he would lap the skin and suck the blood 

until the corpse dehydrated in a crying coffin. I knew because 
she was one, groaning and screaming like a dystocia heifer
whined in strident sound, then, raucous treble softened
and sluggishly turned into humming, a gradual rupture

of her bruised skin and an entanglement of fleshes like Adam and Eve
as her elegant needlework, threads intertwined with other threads, or like
burning dragonflies in moist summer, wings stuck with other wings and slowly
melted in lonely August. Yet she buried all these under a sad pale smile

when she went to check the fire take out chopsticks open a bottle of wine
and wait for his coming back in a rotten shell and cored soul
I stood behind her as I was her sporadic shadow and asked :
Does everything go well? 

Every thing is perfect. She answered and continued to weep in her drafty kitchen 
her hopeless praying to God, tedious begging, her crying smile appeared
when she stirred the same congee and opened the thousandth whisky
for all her life, she could never stop aching or abiding in a lame labyrinth

and from where she grew like a bloated corpse being 
long submerged in still water and of that mud-brown hue
I was baffled by her persistence and pain
like a bleeding hole, pursuing me to drown 

passing through the violet vale with her favorite daisies
and gerontic white poplars she planted in her backyard
bringing my empty hands to hold
her desolate mound, a sighing soul lying deep under

For my first time I looked down like that man 
an angle for only emperors. I scrutinized at 
her numbed face, perished curves, and decayed ribs
for a moment I lost the circulation of blood or beating of my heart

My eyes were watered, but I could not weep like an aged wound
I dropped down the flower and trampled over blue-green grasses
However, my vanity pursued me to write
                and write a little poem for my mother.