The Lamps

Winter shares a door with forgetting.
Handfuls of cold slip just through.

I try to tell my mother goodbye
just in case.

Suffering articulates
a stone well.

But where does illness end?
Or does it form one corner with love.

Orange snow in the mornings
pours a new shape for rising.

A room opens and closes
in the cold shape of a walnut.

I cannot see how many lamps.
But it goes

as far as wishing.
A fox asleep in the painting.

A jug by the bed.

How much of life is taken up
by the vast body of death.

One day, everything is time
and I walk through a knife

cutting the mound in half.

Eventually, I am no longer
so afraid.

I have draped a new dream
over the entrance.

Hua Zi (2024)