What Does It Look Like Underwater?
One summer, I gathered marsh snails by a stream.
The coolness of the water wrapped around my ankles.
Small creatures slipped between the smooth stones,
and the sensation at my fingertips spread like sunlight.
After a long time, laughing with old friends from my hometown
and dipping my feet into the water,
I felt the breath of the river I had long forgotten return.
As a child, I often looked into the water.
“What does it look like underwater?”
A girl asking while holding a fishbowl,
the blue of the sky spreading between rolled-up trouser legs,
clouds drifting across the surface of the water.
The reeds and dragonflies
are still vivid before my eyes.
But before the waterway flowed,
parting had already gone ahead.
The boys and girls left the water
and scattered into factories.
Mother-of-pearl factories, auto repair shops,
sewing machines and wig factories.
At the end of each day,
what remained in their palms
was not the current of water,
but oil and dust.
The years piled up like stones.
When I place my wrinkled hands into the river again,
the current brushes past as if asking,
“What does it look like… underwater?”
The marsh snails still hide among the stones,
and the river flows as if nothing has happened.
The sunflowers bloom,
the chive fields stretch on,
and the hands that once trimmed sweet potato vines
remain, holding their wrinkles.
In the black-and-white photograph,
the crew-cut boy and the bob-haired girl
are still radiant.
The river flows again today.
Holding everything within it,
summer breathes.
I place my hands in the water once more.
What does it look like… underwater?
Between the stones
smooth, smooth marsh snails
summer breathing