Bailu (白露）
Bailu (7th September), the third node of autumn in the Chinese calendar, signals nature’s turn toward cooler days in the Northern Hemisphere. We are honored to celebrate this seasonal shift with the three works we have chosen.
Fiction:
Requiem of Summer
Haber C. Penterworth (pseudonym)
The tired skies lend poetry to the helpless hand. And with it, she spoke a sighing anger among the curling September grass. Flashing beneath the unstrung twinkles of evening, her eyes, which were only ever meant to see stars, peer towards earth.
The stains of happiness long forgotten remind me of something I always knew.
I can see it swirling in the water. I can see it burning in the sky.
And as he stumbled towards the September chill, there swept across the amber livery of the ground a kneeling figure, sloping against the surface of the wind, piercing herself against the cold, to spill herself throughout the world afar.
‘I can’t keep this up,’ he thought. It is more than just a feather in the ground.
And still no echo came from above. Against the frail surface were signs of the tempers that shadowed her. Bungled against the rumblings of the waning light, he heard howls of the oncoming, pacing against the ocean glass. It captures the semblance of something I know might be wonderful. Could be anything. Could be anyone.
‘I must go home,’ he thinks.
Wavering against the blurring of the waves, he opened his heart as she emptied the nothing of her nothingness.
‘Look at me! Please look at me! Can’t you see me? Within you, I connect the dots I cannot speak.’
‘Within you, I collapse into the sentence I cannot think.’
I scream with all the silences I imagine.
And the cold November sun drifts towards eventide.
And the stormfront clouds, now paling in bliss, are pressed beneath the solvent shivers of her feet.
‘A little faith, my dear!’ ‘You look so tired.’
Was I the one who broke this shell? Did I stay too much inside? Have I leaned too close to the water? Careless to the bone.
And so the leaves descend, neglecting to care if their absence had done anything to damage me. What could absence do to damage me? They too shall want to know if I can move as slow. If I can shift through shifting days.
I am no longer in love with your absence.
I am no longer afraid of you calling.
The silencing of earth becomes flesh. It opens the wounds of summers when I longed to be with you. There is still a wind that carries me to the Eastern shores. It forces me towards your conviction.
I rush to the wind with all the stillness I can; the cold November breeze rustling with all the shyness it is capable of.
But in a way, you are still full. Full of the hours I never spent with you. Full of the kindness I need to survive.
But I can’t hear you moving. I can’t see you sleep. There is a delay in what I can think or believe; but speak to me once more, and suddenly I will find myself breathing.
See those little sparks entwine. Flickering. Tell me, can you feel it? Don’t say what it might be until we decide if we are the back to what went before.
The world slopes asunder, thrusting me into the golden hour. So I’ll take it as it is. It’s fleeting. There is a part of me that loves to lose control. And if you question where this mood came from, watch the fallow starlight unfold. And note the distance between our eyes. The restless nights will emerge. Desperate to break into the same places to which I will never return.
It keeps me hidden; keeps me honest.
Poetry:
Journey
Emma Diaz Pease
Emerald leaves turn tired,
And morph into amber.
Then rose paints away the dark blue of night
And dew drops
Dribble upon each blade of grass or
rock of moist most.
As the sun rises
For this
Late summer dawn,
The winds change
And the bond between
Hushed bark and drowsing leaf
Breaks.
Mauve twine snaps
With the recognizable scissors of silver
And the other end falls.
A whispering gale awakes.
The soulful trees shake,
Tremble, quake
With the caress of the awakened squall.
And the world holds its breath,
As the summer turns to fall,
As the undeclared sky flutters with
a million bits of sparkling
amber–cinders of willing arbor.
Beginning and end float to the call of a
Small creak.
A thousand boats
Leaving their homes
On a different journey.
Khakis are good
But don’t try the pine cones
By Emma Diaz Pease
Is what my mother once said
During one of our late summer dinners.
When the sky would turn a
Blazing orange
And the forest of our yard would deepen
Into a dark pine green…
When cicadas would slow their drone
To something like the neverending sound of the
A far away raging sea…
When the khakis and figs would turn ripe,
The quick mice, and cunning opossums
Would come at night,
And ravage the delicacies whole.
But that was when we
Had enough.
That was when I
Had a mother
That would tell me to save the
Khakis for others.
Or collect the pine
Cones.
There was always enough
With her.
But she left last year when
The figs got ripe.
We’re still doing the late summer
Dinner this year.
And as I bite into the first khaki
And the horizon cries clouds of
Pinks and red
The fruit in my mouth tastes bittersweet
And I have to look down
To check that it isn’t a pine cone
Wintersweet Magazine 