Stamp
Qiu Xiaolong

My father collected stamps, cutting
days and nights to small squares,
soaking a sky full of them
in a washbasin, and drying them
on the doors, windows, and mirrors:
two stamps in his eyes,
the face an unfamiliar envelope,
the world an unfolding album.

I, too, was glued onto a piece
of white paper. The snow was falling,
a message in each flake; a crane’s
footprint disappeared overnight.
Mailed to a nonexistent address
to possess a postmark, I was not
returned, as it occasionally happens,
by a mistake at the post office.