Haolun Xu
Faint Drum
I never did make it out of Jersey. I hadn’t flown
in years, and what life was that, staying behind
to help save up for the new washing machine.
With the money left over, my family insisted
that I finally travel. I tell my therapist
before I fly, that I can barely feed myself.
What happens if I starve? I ask.
Why would you? There’s food everywhere,
he says. But there isn’t, I reply.
On the flight, the clouds below were so far,
I was so convinced they were snow along a riverbank.
Perhaps I was an ordinary passenger, and perhaps
this year nothing extraordinary would befall me.
Beautiful passage, when I walk through you with proper faith,
I will be impervious to magic, if even for a moment.
In Colorado, I saw wild horses starting to gallop.
I got out of the rental car and ran alongside them.
The fields around us were barren, for miles.
If I could make just one guess, it would be
that they too felt like rain. Falling in small drops
on the lid of heaven, like a faint drum.
Haolun Xu is a poet, fiction writer, and filmmaker born in Nanning, China. He was raised in New Jersey. His writing has appeared in Guernica, Narrative, Joyland, and elsewhere. His Twitter is @haolun1.