Spoon

[Blood-Red Moonlight]

The moonlight that year was a silver hairpin dipped in poison, every beam piercing Chang'an's wounds. Li Mengxi stood at a breach in the city wall, her plain white skirt stained by gunpowder smoke until it resembled the feathers of a gray dove. The jade pendant at her waist knocked against the arrow slits, making a brittle sound like bones snapping. In the hand warmer I offered her, the coals were consuming the last piece of pine, just as this age devoured everything warm.

[The Blood-Crying Strings]

At court that day, a drop of blood suddenly splashed from the seventh string she had broken. Its scarlet stain fell upon the silk of her Memorial for an End to War and spread into the shape of a crane in flight. In the wine cups of the powerful, her temples rapidly turning gray were reflected. Later, as I cleaned the qin stand, I found tiny words carved at the scorched end of the instrument: “When the song ends, bury my fingernails beneath the willow.” It was a forbidden practice passed down through generations of musicians: offer your flesh and blood, and you can borrow three days of life from the King of Hell.

[Rose-Covered Bones]

A half-broken hairpin is still caught in the iron door of a Luoyang cellar. Every April, thorny vines creep through the cracks and bloom into seventeen double-petaled roses. The most vivid flower always glistens with dew, and when you taste it, it is metallic with the scent of blood. The old soldiers who guarded the city say the wronged spirits are counting their broken ribs. Children tell another story: press your ear to a petal, and you can hear a woman humming “The Book of Millet.”

[The Unrepentant Letter]

A dried camellia is tucked inside the yellowing letter; when wet, it bleeds pale red. She wrote: “I secretly replaced the imperial gift of poisoned wine and filled my rouge box with soil from the south of the city. If you see the moon turn amber, that is me wiping the blood from a bronze mirror.” Last night, after a sudden downpour, a line of watery writing appeared on the desk: “Look, the camellias have bloomed.”