Notice the theme of floating, our volunteer guide says, pointing to the light gray exterior walls. We take out our phones to capture the weeping European beech—the first of its kind I’ve seen—dangling dark papery leaves in cascading caves to mark the walkway into the house. On the drive up …
Anni Liu
When she returns, we mostly sit in separate rooms, faces down …
He takes me, his adult child swaddled in foreignness, to the southern provinces. …
There was a woman who claimed to be made of rain. Dust and the water that closes around it like a pearl, like any conglomeration of past irritations. She claimed no resemblance to Venus in her half shell, or to any lounging surrender of flesh. Let’s say she’s your mother. Let’s say her body has also been under scrutiny for messages to a future viewer. When she was a child, she dissipated, no childhood. She pulled her body toward what seemed full and sweet. She dug into the earth expecting to be fed. It isn’t that she climbed too high or hungered too much. There is no pattern here to warn you off the trail. When you get caught in mist, choked up by a cloud, how do you greet that cliff? You might as well stop figuring your own tragedy as that which she calls her life. …