By Lucia Cao, aged 17

 

The sun is drying the blood in my veins.

Summer has been too long.

 

I remember the time when he told me about a spring day in a town of no name.

The nostalgia in his eyes kills summer’s flames.

 

The townspeople, he said,

They came out to see it as if it was some sort of unknown treasure.

 

What? I asked, and he said, Spring.

 

The word shined in his eyes so I thought,

That must be what it was like, spring.

 

Then I went to bed in his lullaby,

And I knew he was weeping silently, on endless warm nights.

 

We both know,

Mornings only bring to our eyes legs and feet treading on the land, the petals spread on the concrete, the babies laughing without knowledge of the past, the spotlights seizing the dark.

 

They love me dearly, but I know they are not what he told me.

 

Because I age and grow and learn to walk on the streets,

So I’m clever enough, you see,

To know he is gone.

What he seeks cannot here be found.

 

My memory is burned down to oblivion.

The summer has been too long.

 

Wait until you grow up, he had said,

And he would come back to me with spring in his eyes.

 

But I now sleep without lullabies in my head;

And I guess he won’t be glad.

 

I never have the right ideas.

But I’ve learned, he should know before he dies on the road,

This is the millennium we can’t outgrow.