By Tangqing Zhang
I. Spring: Genesis
The first light leaks through frost.
A seed trembles beneath, a name unspoken.
The soil keeps time—slow, patient,
a mother waiting for her son’s return.
Every petal rehearses the myth of becoming;
I write about my birth in pollen and wind.
II. Summer: Ascent
The rivers learn to remember.
We measure warmth with the silence between rains.
Fruits swell with unsaid histories:
all sweetness is a debt to the sun.
The cicadas chant their brief philosophies:
all brightness burns, all bodies hum.
III. Autumn: Reckoning
Time curls into itself, a half-read scroll.
The hands of the clock are leaves in retreat.
I walk through corridors of amber air,
counting what abundance could not keep.
Every fall is an archive of forgiveness;
the wind names what we could not keep.
IV. Winter: Silence
The world carries its absence lightly.
Breath leaves its script against the cold.
In the white margin of memory,
I place the bones of my unfinished prayers.
Snow is the final punctuation;
soft, circular, without remorse.
V. Beyond Season: Rebirth
After the end, a question lingers:
Does time begin again or simply remember?
I listen to the thawing horizon speak.
There is no line between decay and blooming.
All seasons are one—
breathing, pausing, remembering.
Author Bio:
Tangqing Zhang is a bilingual writer based in Meanjin/Brisbane. She is currently a final year Creative Writing student at Queensland University of Technology. Her work explores a sense of belonging, cultural identity, environmental memory across Chinese and Australian contexts. Her writing has appeared in Overland, and she was shortlisted for the 2025 Roly Sussex Short Story Competition.