In the portrait, you were just married. Stenciled and no more starched than a brick wall. The only time you wore the mask.

You hung yourself by the dining table, in the realm of drunken chicken, tea eggs, wintermelon soup but only in the winter. Your house, your rules. 

Your eyes of a war general. Eyes of a tiger who lectures her prey for getting caught. I hid in the closet until dad came home. 

Your smile from a time when there was no room for idols. A time when you traded what you could for rice. 

A smile back then meant much more—it meant grabbing fate by the loins, digging in your nails, never letting go. 

A smile where in certain angles, a grimace. 

Some nights, a faint greenish aura wears around your head. The same when you sleep.