Thirty Years Under the Tree

Looking at the flocks of returning birds flying past in the dusky sky outside the window, he once again clutched the yellowed photo in his pocket - the smiling faces of his parents in the photo looked particularly blurry under the setting sun. He knew that his mother would say "come back soon" in the video again tonight, but the neon lights of the city and the noisy wind on the other end of the phone always made him feel that the voice was like a dandelion blown away by the wind, unable to fall into the soil of reality. He tried hard to write neatly in his homework book, as if this would make his parents far away less worried. But every time he counted the cracks on the ceiling in the dead of night, the vine called "missing" in his heart would quietly wrap around his heart, making him sigh softly. When the moon rises, he always practices smiling at the starry sky. It seems that in this way, parents thousands of miles away can see his "grow up" in the starlight.