How Can You Understand?
Tammy Ho Lai-Ming
And I turned 'round and there you go. / And, Michael, you would fall, / And turn the white snow / Red as strawberries in the summertime. — from Fleet Foxes' "White Winter Hymnal"
How can you understand this if you don't know what red looks like in the summertime? Can you still imagine open wounds staining the white snow crimson? What if you have never fallen? (Sugar: "I am a fallen woman, but I assure you: I did not fall. I was pushed.") Can you understand the sensation of a moment of Zen, then the assuredness of the hard and uneven ground? Perhaps, apart from the cause for the initial lack of balance, falling is the same as being pushed? Are all strawberries sour if your tongue is sour? What if it never snows where you live and you have lived in the same place since your umbilical cord got severed? Your imagination of snow, so many reflections of it, is only a handful of fabled images for Geometry.
TAMMY HO LAI-MING is a Hong Kong-born writer currently based in London, UK. She is a founding co-editor of Cha: An Asian Literary Journal. She has been previously featured in Dinosaur Bees. More at www.sighming.com.
