essay 64
- The first term away from home
- Why the evening study room stays lit
- Chestnuts roasting at the street corner
- When the autumn rain arrives without warning
- Buses home for the holiday week
- Noticing the days draw shorter
- Reserved seats and the grammar of the library
- Osmanthus shows up on the morning ride
- A new term arrives with small rituals
- Bread and candles the night before the typhoon
- Notebooks and pencils before term begins
- The admission letter from Sichuan
- Watermelon at the edge of summer
- Autumn arrives before it feels like it
- Electricity bill and the price of cool
- City's trees in the long heatwave
- Swimming pool's small republic of order
- Heat and patience in the long city summer
- Cicadas, and the attention they take back
- Long light, and the longest day
- The summer after the exam
- Plum rain, and the slow rhythm of the city
- A storm arrives, and the city remembers how to rain
- First mosquito evenings of the new summer
- Countdown weeks in the self-study room
- A phone call home, once a year
- Short sleeves arrive before the heat does
- Guyu and the first sowing
- Spring's long, heavy afternoons
- April rain on the city
- Qingming and the journey home
- The long way home for Spring Festival
- 2025 closes and the new year begins
- The days between and the year’s last quiet
- The year's ledger: the accounts of 2025
- The day itself and the rituals of the turning week
- The eve of the holiday and the year’s last preparations
- The solstice: the year's darkest turn and its promise
- The mid-December pause: the year holds its breath
- The winter quiet and the year's last preparations
- December opens with the year's last month in view
- November closes with the year’s decisions delivered
- The holiday and the year's accounting
- The week before Thanksgiving and the year's table
- October closes with the year’s arguments at their peak
- The October light and the season's own pace
- October opens with the year's final quarter in view
- September closes and the autumn begins in earnest
- Anniversary that the city keeps quietly
- The last year begins
- August closes and the autumn's arguments line up
- The school year that begins with the world in motion
- July closes with the settlements and the summer’s shape
- The long vacation and the quiet between the headlines
- The Fourth of July at two hundred and forty-nine
- June closes: the half-year in the rear mirror
- May closes and the summer's calendar takes shape
- The mid-May lull: a breath between the escalations
- Easter in the middle of the trade war
- Qingming, the road home
- The Year of the Snake arrives on a workday: the shortest festival
- A new year on an old schedule: the first morning of 2025
- December, and the year's last light
- May in the riverside town