The flood waters recede
Leaving mud coating the streets
Thick and cloying
Full of litter and broken branches
Debris covers the ground
The storm has passed
But the trees have fallen now
Their roots exposed and searching for ground
Dying
You can’t go back to before the storm
And in the aftermath
Will you still love me?
I lost my lover in the night
The moonlight showed me our empty bed
Through the woods I chased her
Her red scarf a farewell present, knotted to a tree
I lost my child in the morning
His duvet thrown back, bed empty
Teddy, one paw raised, waving goodbye
I lost my mother in the dusk
The TV ran itself into white noise
In the static, her voice wished me well
I lost myself at midnight
The mirror is empty now
A photo in a gild frame smiles in parting
They’ve called down the stars tonight
And hung them in the folds of the tent
To light up the upcoming show
The skies know this is a special occasion
And stretch out the evening for hours
So the heavens can bend down to watch
The sky neglects her duty:
Night fails to fall tonight
And the starry tent is full of dancing
The trees are bent double, wind clawing leaves from their arms
Flecks of gold dancing through your vision
Whirling and swirling in eddies and drifts
The hedgerows are rich with colour; gold and orange, red and green, brown and yellow
Leaves like confetti at a wedding, clogging the pathways, choking the drains
So that every passing stormcloud turns roads to rivers
YOUR BODY IS EVERYTHING
your sharpest attitude, smoothest aptitude, soaring altitude
your piece of art, piece de resistance
Your rebellion, self-expression
Temple of your own religion
The way your hips move when you walk
lips moving over teeth as you talk
You’re turning heads, girl, but they ain’t looking at your body
YOUR BODY IS NOTHING
It’s a flimsy plastic bag carrying the greater prize
YOUR SOUL IS EVERYTHING
your soul is your sharp attitude
Your soaring altitude
Your aptitude for this funny thing called life
It’s your drive, jive, reasons to be alive
As many and as lovely as stars in the sky
Your dance, your walk, your words
You’re turning heads, girl
The sun had sunk behind the concrete skyline and the sky was deepening from yellow to blue. Xuan sat by the window, watching the streetlights blink on. She checked her phone again, dismayed by the minutes ticking by. It was too late.
“Xuan, are you listening?”
She startled. The other three were staring at her with a mix of exasperation and concern.
“I’m really sorry, but I’ve got to go. It’s getting late,” Xuan said apologetically. “I’ll leave first.”
“No, wait,” Sang protested. “It’s still early! Please stay a little longer.”
“There are only a couple of trains left,” Xuan said unhappily.
Shubin looked up sharply. The ring of his chopsticks striking the bowl send a shiver of silence through the restaurant. “You don’t believe those stories, do you?”
The girl turned pink while the others looked from one to the other in confusion. “What stories?” Tiancheng asked. When neither party answered, he said again, “What are you talking about?”
“It’s nothing,” Xuan protested, but Shubin smirked.
“Oh, haven’t you heard? The subways here in Beijing are haunted by the dead.” The atmosphere tightened. Xuan sat down uncomfortably, clutching her bag to her chest, but the other two leant forward. Now that he had everyone’s attention, the boy dropped his voice ominously. “When they started building the line in ‘65, there were loads of freak accidents. Workers kept being injured, equipment mysteriously broke, and the whole thing was months behind schedule. People said the workers were cursed. Then it was revealed that their digging had unearthed a huge number of human bones.”
Sang gasped, her hand flying to cover her mouth. Tiancheng’s poker face needed work.
“Disturbing their resting place left the spirits without a home. Furious, they wreaked havoc on the workers. When a worker was killed in an accident, the managers became desperate and went to a group of monks to ask for help. The monks blessed the bones and begged the spirits to stop hurting people. They promised the spirits two things: that every night, the subway would shut down to allow the spirits to rest. And before the stations shut, the trains would run without passengers to allow the souls to return to their resting place.”
“This isn’t true,” Tiancheng interrupted scornfully. “They wouldn’t run the trains empty.”
“I’ve felt it,” Sang said, and the other girl nodded. “After the stations close, you can still feel the trains running beneath the ground. And they leave the station lights on for an hour.”
“That’s just so the cleaners can see,” Tiancheng insisted.
“If you take one of the last trains,” Xuan whispered, “You don’t know if the other passengers are living or dead.”
They sit in silence. Tiancheng fiddles nervously with his chopsticks.
“Maybe we should take the bus back to university,” Sang says uncertainly.
They all agree.
We take our meal outside to sit on the parched grass to eat
The same meal; her with a fork, me with chopsticks
The air is warm, sky a brilliant blue despite the late hour
Empty bowls are pushed aside
I lie back on the yellow grass, closing my eyes
Someone, probably a couple of houses down, is having a barbeque
And the smell of meat roasting wafts over
The airplanes rumble overhead and for a glorious moment
Everything is peace
Then a piece of grass is thrown at me
A second and then a third follow
I sit up, and the next hits me in the face
The next piece of grass isn’t immediately chucked at me;
She sits there for a moment, weaving
And then holds out a ring
As it slides onto my finger I wish
That love was really this simple.
I don’t want the light to find me when I’m on my knees
My broken pieces exposed for all to see
Let me pull myself together first, struggle to my feet,
So I can step into the light with no trace of defeat
But I can’t stand
I try, and I collapse again
I lurch up and crumble down
With no support and no strength left in me
It’s impossible alone
And that’s the problem
Because if I don’t let anyone see me on my knees, how can they ever help me up?
A metallic-sounding buzzer goes off
Black words flash on a yellow screen:
“Miss Ghayas to room G08”
A man stands, reaches out a hand
“Come along, Miss Ghayas,” he says formally
The girl is so small that her feel dangle off the chair
She hops down, takes her father’s hand
“Let’s go, Miss Ghayas,” he says
The tiny girl’s laugh rings like a bell
They were together in the dark; but the lights came on, and they fell apart
(some things can’t survive being seen)
The grass wilts and yellows, turns to straw, but people go to the parks and lie under the sun anyway
Bare earth baked dry until it splinters
Above the tarmac the air shimmers like magic in the boiled afternoons
Windows are thrown open, curtains fluttering, and the streets echo with conversations and arguments and different kinds of music
The smell of next door’s dinner drifts into my bedroom, and my stomach rumbles
Her belongings start appearing:
A shampoo bottle in the shower,
An extra towel on the back of the door,
Food in the fridge
One more toothbrush
The kitchen is tidier;
The floor is swept
The cobwebs disappear
I come back home and there is someone waiting for me
There’s music playing
The smell of cooking
She asks if I’m hungry;
She made enough for two
“Do you want tea?” she yells while I’m working
In the late evenings I can hear her in the other room
Chatting away to her boyfriend
The silence that usually fills these rooms
Banished at last
At first glance you might be mistaken into thinking he was a man, with his moustache proudly perched on upper lip and his broad shoulders. But look at little closer, at the nervous eyes, at the twitching hands, the thinness of the jaw, and the eyes. Especially the eyes. He’s just a boy. He’s just pretending until these clothes fit him.
He calls me a “modern woman”
And I am not stupid enough to take this as a compliment.
What he means is this:
I do not fit his view of the traditional woman.
The traditional woman is demure;
She blushes prettily when complimented.
She submits to her husband.
She does not have strong opinions
And never disagrees with him.
She will let him take the lead
And she will follow wherever he goes.
She is a beautiful work of art
For the husband to admire the shape of
But she lacks personality. She lacks
Personhood.
Me? I am the modern woman.
When he is wrong, I tell him.
I disagree with him.
I tell him off.
He tells me he is a better driver because he is male. I tell him he is sexist.
I know that I am loud, headstrong, and unwavering in my beliefs.
I am rude. I break rules. I don’t understand boundaries.
He tells me there is something unattractive about women like me
And on some days, I believe him.
I worry that I am corrosive, aggressive, intense.
I feel the weight of this body:
Broad shoulders. Thick thighs. The fat lying across my hips.
This body jiggles.
It does not fit nicely in dresses.
Some days I leave the house
Only to retreat because my body tells me I am too ugly to go outside.
Some days I hate myself.
Some days I think that I am too strong
And that no man will ever love me
Without wanting me to change.
But there are heroines who are like me
There are women who give their opinions freely
Who stand up for themselves
Who do not submit to this idea of traditional.
There are women who challenge other
With their words, their actions, or their fists
They are women who do not choose tradition
But choose passion, career, excitement, adversity – the harder path.
These women can be found in books and on screens
In poems and on the city streets
In rural villages and in hospitals
These women have existed throughout history
And their endings were usually written for them.
So yes, my body jiggles.
It is imperfect and a bit broken
It causes me pain
I try to love it like a Christmas present given by an obscure not-quite-relative
That I will hide beneath the bed for years
Before letting out into the light of day.
My thighs are large
But they are also strong
When I’m running I don’t feel so ashamed of my body
Because I feel powerful.
He says he wants a woman who will submit to him.
I say I want a man who is my equal.
If I am strong, let a strong man love me
Let him know I am a modern woman.
I’m walking to my meeting with her and the wind is blowing and the noise the trees make is enormous. The storm is overwhelming. I walk fast, head down, hair a mess. When I’m nearly at her building I stop and look back at the path I’ve taken.
On either side of the path is a tree. A solid evergreen stands to the left; its branches are solid and unmoving, leaves barely swaying. On the right is a birch tree; bowed, buffeted, branches bending perilously and close to snapping. It shakes in the wind. Beside the steadfast evergreen, it looks so weak.
I go to my meeting.
“How are you?”
I lie. I tell her I am fine.
“Tell me about your day.”
There’s nothing to tell. But I think of the trees and that image of the two of them, side by side, separated by the path. I tell her about them: about how one stood firm while the other wavered. I tell her I am the tree on the right. I am emotional and buffeted and close to breaking. I tell her I will not survive the storm I’m living through.
She nods, takes a sip of tea, considering. She does not look directly at me; her eyes are silvered.
“In a storm, which tree do you think is more likely to survive?” she asks.
I think of the way the silver birch swayed. I tell her the evergreen would, obviously.
“But the solid and sturdy evergreen tree that can’t bend might end up snapping. A bendy, flexible tree could move with the storm and survive.”
But the strong tree provides shelter, I tell her. People could stand beneath it when it rained and stay dry. People could climb in the branches during summer. Nobody wanted the silver birch; nobody chose the silver birch over the evergreen.
She is blind, but she sees more than I do. “Being affected by things around you is not a weakness. You can come alongside people when they’re sad and cry with them. You can understand people better because you’re moved by them. The silver birch might look delicate, but it’s still standing. And think about the roots of the tree: in evergreens, they’re close to the surface. You can see them coming up through the grass. You never see the roots of a silver birch – they go deeper than you think.
“You are stronger than you think.”
Maybe I’m like the silver birch.
And maybe that’s okay.
The Mind of Tanitha 