Footsteps of Spring

立春 [5] / [7]

He watched several other coworkers who suffered from PTSD after dealing with severe criminal cases. Somebody had encountered a brutal rape case initiated by several men at one time on a single victim. Another investigator was involved in an on-the-spot shooting while serving a warrant, and got seriously injured from a gunshot wound. And some others dealt with corpses, the products of homicides or crimes of the same sort, almost everyday for years.

Even after switching departments, they realized that they were seriously scarred from these experiences. Mental scars that cannot easily be erased. But he always had regarded that term PTSD as something outside his existence, not related to him whatsoever. Now he couldn't help thinking of it as he analyzed his own symptoms now.

He pulled out the notebook he used for writing out thoughts diffusing at random from his head. While turning the pages, he found the very page on which he jotted down the poem he wrote when he scheduled his first date with Sarah. He was seized by the a feeling of nausea.

He grabbed the page to tear it out, but stopped short. These were his own feelings, which he himself felt at that moment. There was nothing wrong with feeling and expressing them.

He began to jot them down slowly on a blank page.

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<Another hometown>

On the night I came back to my hometown

My skeleton followed, laying down in the same room.

The dark room opens into the universe

The blowing wind comes like sounds from somewhere in the sky.

Shedding tears

staring at the weathering skeleton,

is it me weeping?

The skeleton weeping,

Or the beautiful spirit weeping?

A dog with high fidelity

Barks against the darkness all night

The dog, barking at night, might chase after me.

Let us go, let us go

Let us go like a person who is being pursued.

Behind the skeleton's back,

Let us go to the other beautiful hometown

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