Yu Chang

rain

Many people complain about the rain this spring, but the rain has always reminded me of when I was a young child growing up in a small village near Chungking, the wartime capital of China. A  rainy day meant there was no need to run to the makeshift airraid shelter, an old coal mine just beyond the terraced fields of the village. The grassy trails to the shelter could be quite slippery even when dry. One time, after the siren sounded, I ran so fast to try to catch up with everybody else that I fell face down into the field below. Oblivious to the mud all over my body, my mother hugged me after she pulled me up from the rice paddy. I wish now that I had said “I love you,” but I just squirmed out of her arms. We were the last ones to get to the shelter. “We are safe now,” she smiled.

deep in the coal mine
my mother’s grip
tightens