A Trace of Satin

There was once a loquat tree in the courtyard, planted by my wife the year she died. It now stands tall, its branches spreading like a canopy.

On the day she died, she asked only one thing:

“Have the loquats ripened?”

Every summer afterward,

he stood beneath that tree.

Someone asked him if it was worth it.

He said:

“All living beings suffer.”

“When I held her close, it was the only sweetness.”

A trace of silk, a trace of a person, a trace of mountains and rivers, a trace of dust.

She flowed away.

A Trace of Silk