Gui Zhou, Southern China

The roads are unfamiliar again for the lady

She begins to sweep the streets of Gui Zhou and when the pattering of rain,

Marks the humid beginnings of the fifteenth spring,

the juddering tears of the clouds;

A puddle of spilled milk against a carton of blue

Join her own.

She puts on her straw hat

Worn from the sun, wind, and the occasional lightning clap

That has aged with her.

Her eyes hunt the crowds, seeking out the young men,

stepping out from the bus stops and around the street corners

Her gaze

lingering on their foreheads.

Just for a moment, and her eyes flicker,

Her fingers wrap tighter around the handle,

Pressing crimson crescents into her palm.

Her eyes become black whirlpools that reflect the morning sun, bright, before

They drain away, and her arms move against the broom once more,

As she had always done.

She moves, one street to the next, her halting steps shuffling past

Uneven cobblestone and littered fields that she sweeps clear

Her broom clutched in the calloused remnants that tell of her past,

Roughed valleys of harsh jutting bone and the scatter of sunspots,

Pallid brown seeds planted at the nape of her gnarled fingers,

the tree that drained its life before its first leaves.

She scours her brain for an answer

Blaming herself, boring away at old wounds

If only she’d left the shop earlier on that rainy Wednesday,

If she didn’t stop to converse with that neighbor

If only…

Chasing a dragonfly into waiting hands

The sky strung together by gray clouds that shielded the sun from the mud and pavement

And a magicians warped smoke curtain,

That stole her son, from her.

A sapling, plucked from the ground and robbed from the earth

The very soil from where it sprung;

By the hands of human traffickers

Fingers tainted by the bodies of a thousand youths

And the material worth of the discrete rolls

Passed beneath the tables.

And so she sweeps away with her broom

The dried leaves, furled and long dead

Off to the side of the streets

Her footsteps across China, that of a fine toothed comb

That spanned a thousand miles

And in those cities and towns, her eyes sweep the sea of people

Searching, silently riding the waves of passer-bys

And within a frothing current of scattered prospects,

Looking for her son.

Perhaps she would spend the rest of her life

Riding in the current of the train tracks

Sweeping the streets of Hei Long Jiang to Chang An.

Because she cannot bear the ‘what if’s’ that would follow

That led up to that day and that moment.

If she turned her back, stopped holding on

To the fading picture of a cherubic boy

With the star shaped birthmark on his forehead.

Folded into a dozen squares in her back pocket

That she could have found him

If only she kept on searching

and hoping and believing

That her child may still be out there.

That her child will return home.

Shenyang, Northern China

The hike to school is long.

A winding path through the mountain and fields, encrusted

By a powdering of snow and the weight of hanging ice crystals,

bending the backs of naked trees

The backpack weighs her down and hunched her shoulders

An excuse to look down, eyes trained at her worn shoes,

Away from the sympathetic glances and the curious chatter

That flutters away from behind upturned palms.

She blames it on herself.

For all the times she pushed him around

Turning the lock on the door before his clumsy fingers

Could warm the metal’s cool surface

How she laughed when he fell,

Face first into frozen sludge

The product of a late autumn snow storm

That turned to water as it hit the ground.

And the times she said that it wasn’t her business

That he might as well wander off on his own

Because she couldn’t care less.

But when she walked back up the trail

That same path she took everyday up to the schoolhouse

The frigid air was empty next to her

She felt small fists tug at the straps of her backpack

But they were fluttering on their own, pushed frantically

By the relentless attacks made by the howling wind.

She waits for the phone call,

That would cut short the harsh reality that it was.

The subjects of the stories they were warned of

Children trafficked by the thousands

Ripped away by shadows, lurking behind street corners

And backlots and empty playgrounds.

They were only tales to her once.

When her family notified the government

Adding his name to the list of thousands

They harbored hope that he would one day,

Be found again.

But she knows the list only grows longer

The wait will stretch on

Weeks turn into months and then into years

Perhaps they will never find him.

Left on the constant doubt that lingers

Throughout their lives if he may still be out there.

And perhaps one day, long into the future

The police will find him, living a different life

With a different name and a different family

And that they may walk to school hand in hand again.

That her little brother would return home.

Northern Guangdong, Southeast China

The buildings are yellowed with age — and something else

It’s all the backdrop to someone’s play

The hollering of schoolchildren below

In their blue and white uniforms

The spicy fumes from the Zao Dian shop – the smoke machine

Wafts and curls its tendrils around the ankles

Of some stray dog and a construction worker

Ambling to an early morning shift.

I press my cheeks against the harsh ridges

Of the gates that enclose me from the outside

The clamoring of car horns and the rickety kiosks

Laden with fruits and children’s toys and the

Cigarette tainted conversations of the taxi drivers

In their mid afternoon break.

Raucous story telling mixed with Marlboros stubbed out on glittering car hoods.

As they leaned on road side fences, shirts rolled up past their chests

beneath collars that drooped over, wilting petals in the summer heat.

I grew up in a world

Secluded by the harsh black lines of a gate

The warm fingers of my Grandmother that clung to mine

Warning me of bad men, that stole children away from

The breasts of young mothers.

To stay away from strangers on the roadside,

Because you never know who they are behind the smiling mask

Of cooing greetings and friendly banter

They were scary stories to me

Sending me hurtling into a waiting duvet.

Because even when my eyes found its own way

To paint the world a rosy pink:

From the way arms tightened around my shoulders when the sun began to fall

Below the skyline.

And as I wandered off on my own

The incessant scolding of my kindergarten teachers,

The wrinkling in the corner of their eyes and twist of their lips.

I knew it was real.

Even for me, the promise of shielded eyes and guarded walls

Can give away to a drop of water that seeps its way

Through an unnoticed crack.

And in the back of our minds it is there.

A reminder that darkness is constant even in daylight

When the newspaper slid under the door

Posted yet again, with a photo of a small child

Cut through with bolded black letters

It comes not as a surprise,

But another call for the numbers that are still rising

Of child trafficking in China

The list that only grows in numbers

rising off forgotten names

The only things that signified that they ever existed

A small heartbeat that once dared breathe the air

And feel the Earth beneath their feet.

Each year neglected,

but for the unheard cry of 20,000 mother.