Don’t Cry, Tai Lake

and bearing him up to the surface again, her legs tightening around him in waves of prolonged convulsion.
    Afterward, they lay quietly in each other’s arms, languorous, in correspondence to the lake water lapping against the shore, lapping in the quietness of the night.
    “We’re having the lake to ourselves.”
    She whispered a throaty agreement before falling asleep in his arms. “Yes, we’re the lake.”
    A night bird hooted, close, yet sounding eerily distant. Chen hoped it wasn’t an owl, which were supposedly unlucky at this hour. An inexplicable sense of foreboding brought him back to the present.
    Again, he turned to her curled up beside him, the serene radiance of her clear features vivid in a flood of moonlight. He was awash in gratitude.
    All this was perhaps too much for him to think about now. But he had to, he told himself. At least, to think of a plan to protect her, and then, if possible, a plan for their future.
    Eight or nine times out of ten, however, things in this world don’t work out in accordance to one’s plan, as an ancient sage once said.
    In his college years, Chen had planned to be anything but a cop, but he failed.
    Then he tried to be a good cop. Was he failing at that too?
    That he wasn’t ready to admit. Not yet. Nothing could be judged out of context. That was something he’d learned—by being a cop.
    For him, being a good cop came down, invariably, to the conscientious conclusion of a case. The present case now came with an obligation to make sure that nothing would happen to her.
    Would he be able to do that? What was involved in this case, in the final analysis, was politics, which kept turning like colored balls in a magician’s hand, unfortunately not in his hand. So all he could do was to play a cop’s hand. It wouldn’t be easy. The approach taken by Internal Security might be political, but they at least had witnesses and evidence. Politics aside, he had practically no trumps in his hand. Not to mention, for the first time in his career, a possible conflict of interest.
    Now, there was something in what she had told him earlier tonight, something concerning one statement crucial to the investigation …
    She stirred, turning, her shapely leg sprawling out. He couldn’t help reaching out and tracing his fingers along her bare back, which rippled smooth under his touch, like the waves that begin, and cease, and then again begin, / with tremulous cadence slow .
    Once again, he found himself too distracted to concentrate on the case. So he got up, found the laptop in the living room, and brought it back to bed. Propped up by a couple of pillows stacked against the headboard, he placed the laptop on his drawn-up knees, overlooking her moon-blanched face.
    He didn’t start all at once. He was sitting still, thinking, unaware of the time flowing away like waves in the dark. It started to rain. He listened to the rain pattering against the windows, imagining the lake furling around like a girdle.
    To his surprise, she flung one arm over, her fingers brushing against the keys as her hand fell, then grasping his leg, as if anxious to reassure herself that he was beside her in her sleep. Her accidental touch brought up the lines he had composed earlier.
    So he began working with a multitude of images surging up into his mind, thinking of the lone battle she had been fighting for the lake.
    Soon, the spring is departing again.
    How much more of wind and rain
    can it really endure? Only the cobweb
    still cares, trying to catch
    a touch of the fading memory.
    Why is the door always covered
    in the dust of doubts?
    The lake cries, staring
    at the silent splendid sun.
     
    Who is the one walking beside you?
     
    The moon wakes up from a nightmare
    immersed in ammonia, pale,
    pensive in speculation,
    in the acid reflection of the lake,
    the stars blinking tearfully
    trembling in the cold.
     
    By the lake, an apple tree is blossoming
    transparent in the light, expecting—
    only a gesture, nothing
    but a gesture, the test always done
    by selecting the pure sample
    up to the standard.
    The lines were disorganized, but it was imperative for him to put them all down without a break. He went on typing, juxtaposing one scene with another, jumping among the stanzas, worrying little about the structure or the syntax. Realities, too, were disorganized.
    He felt as if the lines were flowing in from the lake, flowing through her. He simply happened to be there, pounding at the laptop.