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Lines for Those Who Have Committed Suicide in a Dream
Searching for the right sentence, the exact wordthat will hit the nail right on the head—a thousand flowers blossomingand I’ve finally died, shot by this kind of weapon.
I should’ve died as an infant! Now the time has comewhen nothing is authentic.They die like ripe melons falling from the vine.
This is the last time they can ever cry. Stop: they are stopped.Explode: they explode into themselves.All the innocent girls I’ve known have died this way.
What scene surrounds a suicide?Spring summer autumn winter. In which season will theyset the scene? I will have my graveyard bloomwith the words I’ve written!
I will let the fresh blood run like ink,like flowing water. If anyone passes by,please take up my brush and dip it into my blood.
I close these eyes that will soon be blind.I forbid my hair to grow gray, my teeth to loosen.I take a long nap alone in the green mountains and streams.
Please bathe my body and trim my fingernails.Put a new dress on me, one that I’ve never worn.When I’m in the other world, I want to look clean as jade.
My beloved, this is the only mistake we’ve madein this world. After today, will they ever be as sadas they are now? In their minds will we belike bits of paper scattered by the wind? [End Page 152]
Life will go on as usual.Never before, when a name has been erased,has the sun not risen again, or men and womenceased to fall in love.
In a time without dreams, bodies are not bodies.In a time without dreams, souls are not souls.In a time without dreams, we are not us.And so, how many deaths will it take until truthbecomes true? Some of our sisters are daydreaming—will they be saved when one daythey are awakened by a human voice?
Many other sisters enjoy life—For them, one is always one, two is always two.They have no doubts. They will bear children and grandchildren,live full lives and die at an old age.
My clean grave will be the blossoming of my poems.People passing by, please dip this brush into my blood.One day I will die calmly in my own words.
Kangding, Tibet1989.7.21 [End Page 153]
Tsering Woeser is a Tibetan writer and journalist born in Lhasa. She has won the Norwegian Authors Union’s Freedom of Expression Prize, the Association of Tibetan Journalists Silver Medal for her courageous writing on China’s repression in Tibet, and the International Women’s Media Foundation Courage in Journalism Award. She was recently given the Prince Claus Award by the Dutch for her courage in reporting about Tibet.
