It Took a While

Artwork by Michelle Zhou, staff artist.

I blame it on my tender heart. We walked for miles on end—7 by 7, 49 days to be precise—limbs swelling, ankles bruising violet, the yellow ridges of corn scabbings on our feet, before we reached the tallest mountain. This was after the jutting landscape behind, the undulating hills, shrunk down to protruding fingertips in the mossy greenbelt. The pages in our notebooks curled butterfly-wing up from the soft, falling rain. 

I recall the mountain ahead piercing the mess of blue sky, the broken vertebrae of sky sill. My age is a long time to be alive, but I climbed it anyway. I climbed it like the snub-nosed monkey does, with molding sticks snapped clean off mother trees, vines yanked from dendrite roots, hands bleeding like split veins. My friends could not stop me, so they gathered their silk robes and followed. I sometimes think they may have begun to hate me for it. 

The top of the mountain was a beauty. Our starved stomachs ate through the air like oxygen. Herbs grew in agglomeration and flowers opened their throats towards the quiet of raindrop patter. For the years that have gone by, I have cupped the plants into my palms and plucked them by the spine and tasted each one of them. They have brought me information, and I write them down in the notebook, ink nib rubbed smooth, I bottle them in vials; the heartbreak grass I nearly choked my lifeline on, the oblong snake jasmine that brought my breath back. 

I say this is the fault of my kindness, but it really because of where I come from. Back home, the villagers have coughed in scabbing syllables through each winter and the children have died. They lay in the open, gentle lavender lips and salt-pepper eyelashes from the snow because the ground is as stiff as their bodies. I see this and forget my worth. Who would care for an old man of my age—but I sometimes think I have been cursed to care more about others than myself. For a while, I found death everywhere, strewn across the streets like ants, in the gnawed open wounds of flesh, crimson budding from inside linen bandages. So I left; I left for the mountains, and they followed my retreating shadow. I know they miss their families, I know it has been four long years, I know some of their children are gone.  

I place another plant in my mouth and chew to test its properties and wonder if compassion is a sin. 

But I do not think much of it now. There is little on my mind. I will not cry at the prospect, but I also know, with conviction, one day, I will taste the herbal bitterness of  a death-dealing plant scared of the spores on my tongue, and my mind will not yet know it has been goaded and tricked before I feel my knees on the soft earth which calls me back home. Out of everything, I can only remember home. I wonder if there will be much pain. I wonder if my end will be kinder than the childrens’ whose flesh will begin to rot in the coming spring. 

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As a young child, I often listened to my grandmother tell Chinese folklore stories. She would open a book (I still have it on my shelf) and read; one of the stories was Sheng nong chang bai cao (神农尝百草). It tells of a man, who witnesses the suffering of his villages and sets upon a journey to alleviate the pain of sickness by collecting plants and documenting their properties. Although the story is mythical, I have always admired Sheng Nong's altruism and willingness to sacrifice, and therefore dedicate this piece to him. 

Michelle Li lives in TX and enjoys writing. She has been recognized by Scholastic Art and Writing, The Waltham Forest Poetry Contest, The Rising Voices Awards, published or forthcoming in Blue Marble, Masque and Spectacle, and Lumina Journal among others. She is an alumnus of the 92Y Young Writer's Workshop, and this summer, she will be attending Kenyon Review’s Young Writers Workshop; you can find her on the board of the Incandescent Review, Pen and Quill magazine, and the Malu Zine. She’ll read practically anything she can get her hands on, the more absurd and emotional the work, the better, and plays both violin and piano. She also has an unhealthy obsession with Rachmaninoff, morally grey characters, and Sylvia Plath.