The 3rd Graders Go to School
How far am I from the truth?
All I have is two LED screens of opposite news
glaring like unsheathed blades
and some broken words of a phone call
from a friend who still lives in Hong Kong.
I am two worlds away, and the
birds here sing so differently in the morn.
I can never get used to
a turquoise colored dawn
but every time I want to hold on
to something like a truth
I think of them. I remember
how they marched down the narrow roads,
chilly and quiet in the early morning,
how they have to pass
four times the customs,
two in Shenzhen and two in Hong Kong
and walk two hours straight
just so they can make it
to the morning recitals
their school classrooms at Kowloon.
I imagine them marching down
the burnt street,
in their snow-white uniforms
and flapping red scarves.
One of them got peanut butter on his dimple
the shape of a tiny star.
I imagine
tiny shoes wobbling in concert,
like dandelions barely holding on
in the bland wind;
and the colorful lunchboxes!
Teal green, navy blue,
blue, blue with stripes, yellow and red
packed by their moms at 4 a.m.
4 is before the birds and bikes, I imagine,
before the honks and engines,
roadblocks and sirens,
chants and shouts,
locked arms and bent knees;
before the “we”s and “them”s
and the smoked air and the startled pigeons.
Before anything.
They march from their average homes in Shenzhen,
and I imagine it is not a crucial difference
for any of them, that things
don't mean something.
The flags roaring in the wind
have an ideal to teach.
The smeared plaques on the ground
did an age wrong.
The giant strokes of characters
clinks and clanks on…
I imagine they walk on
and their feet know only
the next firm, solid ground.
I see their little but sharp eyes
waiting at red lights,
reaching for the world.
One by one and always before,
not after, a decision, they take it all in:
the smells of a steaming baozi shop
and of a dewed roadside rose
are equally curious.
I imagine a boy could pick a rose
as they wait in the traffic, and put it
in a girl’s hands,
well before they will learn the name of it at school;
And before the redness
takes hold-- it is already safely
in her palm--I imagine
they march on, perhaps singing
a song knowing only half the lyrics,
a song that neither the chess-playing old man
nor the bulbar birds,
will recognize, but can't help to hum along.
A song sung and mostly out of tune,
or even jarring to some. A hurrying figure going
to the metro, I imagine,
moved by their earnest and simple tune,
might stop, and give it a listen—
In my imagination, truth is not hard.
It does not ask you anything
doesn't ask you to swear fealty, or be its gunman,
nor does it blockade you
or hold a grudge against other truths.
In my imagination, truth
is not far from the third graders,
infallibly every morning,
go to school.
Xiaoqiu Qiu is a Chinese MFA student in UNLV.