Fugitive, 1952

What is home if kitchen forgets the flavor of your presence?

is it truly hometown if safe and sound means separation?

and who would've thought that the road home would be runway for your getaway?

stewarding power faithfully shouldn't be a life sentence

but when wolves rule this animal farm

no one born year of the horse leaves unscathed

that's why you sent firstborn to boarding school

even though it would be years before her blossoming brilliance would feed from the sunshine of your radiance

for you were barred from fresh air as one with landowner heirs

but good fortune became golden opportunity

when they trusted you to lift pivot foot from prison

and I wonder 70 years later if you would have changed your decision

to leave children

desert your roots

scrap for reality beyond communist reeducation truths

yet hope docked on the other side of border

so you flew south like migrating monarch

traversing tragedy towards the treasure of liberty

praying with your feet that freedom was smiling on the other side of fear

fleeing fugitives

with newborn tucked in like dumpling skin

smuggled between gunfire and poverty

your heart rate scorched with a heartache kind of aftertaste 

hotter than bottle of 辣椒 red pepper flakes

but bitter like tears of blindsided goodbyes

I wonder if the nightmare of being caught outweighed your hometown-sized loss

all I know is that going back was beyond pipe dream 

a stable river of possibility once ran through your village

but ever since that fateful day 

those dreams vanished like dammed tributary

so you began to reimagine your family's future

escape was just the beginning

next would come a blue-collar engineering feat to rebuild what was taken 

but first you had to ensure reunion

for three children were still orphaned in motherland

and thus began the intricate operation 

to retrieve the priceless fragments of

family

imprisoned behind the flames of revolution