only child
this morning
a blue sky stitched with white patches
makes me exhale with relief because I still remember
Armageddon Day
when even the mighty sun was chained below the horizon
and an apricot sky shed tears of ash
through a gaping hole
-
my father is from Beijing
the forbidden city of brilliant red temples,
opulent imperial gardens
and a smog that hangs like blackout curtains
for 176 days of the year
-
he met my mother in Shanghai
when I visited in 2010, during the World Expo
the city halted all its factories
jets sprayed sunscreen into the stratosphere
it was a mirage of blue sky days, “better city, better life”
that ended when the Expo ended
in a blanket of brown haze
-
my parents grew up in cities with compromised lungs
so they traveled across the expanse of the Pacific Ocean
in search of something better
for their only daughter
born during the one-child policy and the Kyoto Protocol
when a group of nations first gathered
to reduce the carbon that hung in the air
-
as the oceans turn acid
bleaching the orange-purple corals white
and color is choked, suffocated
I wonder to what lengths I will have to travel
across oceans, land, and sky
to protect my only child
-
Grace Li is a hardware product manager at Span, a climate tech startup that is enabling the rapid adoption of renewable energy in homes. She is a 2021 Clean Energy Leadership Institute (CELI) fellow and previously worked on a range of technologies from heat pumps to exoplanet imaging hardware. Outside of work, Grace is on a mission to visit all the national parks in the United States and enjoys reading and writing in nature.
You can follow her on LinkedIn.
Photo credits:
“The Day The Sun Didn't Rise” by Christopher Michel, via Flickr
“Smog over Beijing's Forbidden City” by Brian Jeffery Beggerly, via Flickr
“Blue sky with fluffy clouds” by Babak Farrokhi, via Flickr