September 2026

You think this world was always porcelain?

Well, listen: nothing delicate survives the kiln.

My fingers stitched together earth, a makeshift clay

Rough-pressed like dumpling skin, your bones

I shaped from mud-drenched river silt, then

Swelled each lung with steam from jasmine tea—

Such easy breaths, as if they’d always been.

I laughed, perhaps too loud, to see you crawl,

My newborn creatures, tumbling blind as plums

From branches shaken by an absent storm.

I watched you stumble, knees like half-cooked rice.

Yet the silk of innocence frays so fast,

And soon enough your hands reached out to

Tear the fabric of the sky. Oh, restless heirs.

I woke one morning, the world cracked like old jade,

The four pillars shattered like chopsticks on the floor.

Did you think fixing broken skies was art?

I melted coloured stones, patched blue with green,

A seamstress forced to stitch with melted gems.

The clouds a ragged hemline, barely straight.

Yes, laugh. I see your smirks behind those fans.

You think me ancient, goddess carved in jade,

Immortal statue, solemn-faced, serene?

I am the dust on bowls of uneaten rice,

The sigh your mother hides behind her hands,

The fingerprint smudged dark on lacquered wood.

My craft is imperfect, fragile, stained with doubt.

And now your cities rise in steel ribs and glass,

As if my clay no longer bore your weight.

Yet still, at dawn, you kneel by riverbanks,

Your palms cupped close, collecting silt and dreams.

Oh children, built from earth and steam and stars—

Your history, a porcelain cracked in pride,

Your future, kiln-fired, singing in my hands.