Xiaoman Wedge

Later, I always wondered when a person's childhood ended. Some people say it was the day when they had their first menstruation, some people said it was the day they left home to study in other places, and some people said it was the day they first earned money to buy things for their families. For me, it's neither. My childhood ended in the midsummer when I was twelve years old, with the cicadas chirping noisily. I clutched my primary school diploma and pushed open the mahogany door with peeling paint. The sunflowers in the yard were wilted and the main room door was open. It was empty inside, even the iron pot on the stove had been taken away. There was only a crumpled piece of paper on the table, with my mother's crooked handwriting: Your father and I went to the south to work. You live with your grandma, and be obedient. No signature, no date, not even a superfluous reminder. I stood in the empty main room. The sunlight came in through the crack in the door and cast a slender beam of light on the ground. Dust was floating around in the light, just like what I saw when I hid under the bed for the first time when I was four years old. It turns out that my childhood has been slowly dying since the day I hid under the bed. And this day is just the day it was completely buried.