Atmosphere
A photograph of my grandmother when she was sixteen
has an atmosphere.
A big old earthenware jar
holds no rice anymore
but it has an atmosphere.
A field after the harvest
and a field right before the harvest
both have an atmosphere.
I fall silent
watching the rain turn into the dust of decades past.
About the translators
Austin Woerner is a Creative Fellow in Chinese-English literary translation at the University of Leeds.
Chen Yushu is an MA student in Postcolonial Studies at the University of Leeds School of English.