Eighteen Springs in a Back Basket

The marks carved into the stove were Wang Dong's rings of survival. At three, he was told by his grandmother, "Mom is keeping us warm in the fire." At six, he used his back to catch the urine stains from his younger brother, who was heading to the city. At twelve, he dropped out of school and took up his grandfather's bamboo backpack. When the cries of his four half-siblings pierced the cold night at 235-3 Xinhua Street, fourteen-year-old Wang Dong slit his wrist and let his blood drip into the mouths of the twins. "Dong, your blood is more precious than milk!" His grandmother's cry was heart-wrenching.

At 1:29 p.m. on August 25, 2020, eighteen-year-old Wang Dong let go as his younger siblings called him "Brother Dad." On the back of a yellowed photo by his hospital bed, his birth mother's address had blurred into a blot of ink from the bloodstains. The parental signature line on the cremation form was blank. The world finally acknowledged him as a father, after he had become an unclaimed body------------