Jiaoyi Li
Creative Writing
Poem and Fiction
How She Closed Her Eyes
Nanjing Massacre is the massacre took place in Nanjing China during World War 2. Over 200,000 residents in Nanjing were brutally murdered by Japanese soldiers.
This is how she closed her eyes,
With nothing but pain and regrets,
She regretted not buying her brother candies,
Not saying “I. Love You. “to her parents;
Not saying goodbye to the teacher, not
Lying under the sun long enough, not
having enough time to play, to study, to waste.
No this is how she closed her eyes.
With enormous, unsettled desire.
She desired to grow,
To get married,
To love and to hate,
To save her parents from the blades
And her little brother from being thrown
Into the fireplace.
To run away from being raped.
No this, this is how she closed her eyes.
With a faint hope to be saved,
but witnessed it faded away.
She drifted away in the river,
As the rotten smell covered her odor
She was not lonely, no, never,
there were thousands and thousands of her.
Altogether in that river,
They screamed together,
It’s a massacre!
This is how the city Nanjing closed her eyes.
Oh no,
She will never close her eyes.
Flash Fiction
My Baby
It’s funny how they would let her bury her head in the basin where people shit, but would never let her drink a sip of coffee.
Marie thinks to herself before another surge of nausea sweeps across her body. She leans more into the toilet to try to throw something out of her stomach. But nothing is coming out except for some slimy fluid that burns her mouth.
William gives a few feeble pats on her back.
“You can save that hand to pinch your nose.” She brushes his hand off her back. He hates odor. She knows that. But the more she is aware of his discomfort, the more she needs him to stay.
She turns around to look at her husband’s face, hoping to find traces of disgust. But her husband is still the perfect model husband that makes all her girlfriends envy her. Marie stares at him intensely but could not find a single threshold for her annoyance. Those blue eyes of his are filled with affection and concern.
Disappointed, she casts William out of the toilet so she can continue being the pregnant lady who suffers instead of the lucky woman with a perfect husband.
It’s fair to say that Marie is being nitpicky. The first trimester is the hardest, they say. But for the majority of the time, Marie just lies on her bed and wonders if boredom would kill her before the fetus gobbles her up.
When the test turned pink, Marie was shaking in her office toilet. She had just finished one of the most important presentations in her professional career. The difficult client was surprisingly pleased with her. With any luck, she would be the first team leader to sign this big firm.
Things were going so well that Marie was blinded by her swelling luck. She didn’t know life would hit her with a blow at one of the happiest moments in her life.
William is humming a song in the room next door. It’s a familiar and joyful tune that Marie could not recognize. He is building the crib they just bought—well, he just bought. The soft singing is so gentle and soothing that it irritates every single bone in Marie’s body.
This scene is reminiscent of the times when they had just gotten married. In their sweetest moments, their favorite pastime was just lying in bed together. His long pianist’s fingers caressed her edgeless jawline as she rested her cheek against his chest. He would hum to her. The tender melodies tickled her nerves as they landed on her ears together with his breath.
“Why are you singing to me like I’m a baby?” She giggled.
“Because you are my baby.” He brushed her dark hair away from her face and gazed at her deeply. “I want our babies to have your eyes. And every time I sing to them, I would remember how much I love you at this moment.”
William’s singing continues to reverberate in the still-empty baby room next door while Marie sits in the ruins of her life, trying to remind herself that she chose this for herself.
She buries herself in the linen again. The phone on the counter buzzes. It’s William’s phone.
Without hesitation, Marie picks up the small device and unlocks the screen. The password of his phone is her birthday. It has been this way since they got married. She never checks his phone as frequently as she does now. Even Marie herself is sometimes confused about what she is suspecting.
Yet, in her heart, there is a blurry feeling—a mixture of rage, frustration, and annoyance—that ignites a fire of curiosity.
She needs to know more about her husband. She wants to know if he is truly enduring her temper without any complaints. She craves more truth. She wants to know what he texts, what he posts, what he rants about, and what porn he watches. She wonders what really goes on behind the shell of a perfect husband.
Yet, she never finds anything.
“Baby, what do you want for dinner?” William’s voice interrupts Marie’s thoughts. Coming from another room, his voice sounds faint. Marie brushes it off her mind like brushing off a piece of wandering feather.
Marie keeps her eyes fixed on the screen. She scrolls through different apps on his phone carelessly. William’s "For You" page is clean, as if it has been carefully dusted.
“I think I’m almost done with building the crib. Can you use my phone to pull up the order from Amazon so I can check something?”
Marie sits up and leans against the wall. She logs into the Amazon page and types in the word "Baby Crib."
At least fifty different cribs of various styles pop up. Along with the keyword "Baby," almost a hundred other baby products appear—diapers, toys, baby clothes, and baby shoes.
It doesn’t really strike Marie at first glance. But as she scrolls down, she can't help but notice something strange.
All the baby products were added to the cart around five months ago.
Five months.
But she is only two months pregnant.
Marie frantically scrolls down and realizes that there is no exception to the pattern she just discovered.
How strange.
It’s like he predicted this accidental pregnancy.
Abortion crossed her mind when she was squatting on that cold toilet seat. But she persuaded herself that it was fate and surrendered her ambition to complete William’s biggest dream.
For all this time, she complained and whined, but she carried on, knowing that this was a choice she made. It was her choice to keep the baby. Not everyone else’s.
But what if this was simply not an accident to begin with…
“Baby.”
William stands in front of Marie, staring at her.
Maybe she is shaking. Maybe she is sweating. Maybe she is screaming.
“Are you okay?”
Of course, she is not okay! She wants to yell at him, interrogate him until he admits his evil motivation. But at that moment, she just stares back at him in silence, like a tug-of-war.
William bends and hovers over Marie like a hawk towering over his prey. Suddenly, he pulls Marie into his arms.
“It’s okay, I’m here.”
His arms forge the perfect cuddle—warm and solid.
“I love you.” William whispers in her ear in a tone similar to his humming.
In this perfect embrace, Marie realizes there is no room for struggling. The two arms around her are so tight that it’s fragile. If additional tension causes someone to collapse, the first person who falls is not going to be her husband.