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A Ghost Longing For Mother

There was a man who survived through 
everything against his will while he was alive.

One day this man’s ghost arose, walked out of his grave and followed his footmarks on a rugged trail, hard and farther than a way to the netherworld.The ghost was drawn by his mother and childhood memories. He wanted to visit his old home: just as a salmons’ instinct makes them swim against the stream. He pushed a twig gate of a ruined straw-roofed house and called his mother’s name though he knew 
she was deceased long ago. 

Nevertheless, when he stepped in the room he was overwhelmed 
by the roomful of his mother’s anguish. The whole of misery caused from
destitution; his mother was quenching her burning heart with sighs and tears. 
He took his mother’s hand and led her to sit in the elder’s place in the room. 
He knelt before her and bowed with highest respect with tears.

The mother’s kaleidoscopically changing image was: distorted like an unfinished clayware, from unceasing worries for her son; like a cracked and chipped water jar, of the poverty stricken, therefore, disregarded and neglected by neighbors; like a discarded broken piece of pottery, after all kinds of mistreatment she was deserted from her husband.

O poor mother, she was worn out from hardship of life, that’s why 
she may look insignificant rustic woman to others’ eyes, to the ghost, 
she was the only and most precious person in his whole life.

She was poor but not servile; she was forsaken but did not abandon her child. She filled her empty stomach not with food but with watching her child eating, though it may be a bowl of boiled barley; brighten tiresome dreary nights listening to her child’s home work book reading with clear and innocent voice under a dim lamplight; 
she warmed herself up in the chilling long nights staring at her child sleeping peacefully covered with, thought, it’s not a soft and comfortable quilt but a rag.

Although the only reason the ghost sneaked out from the dismal cold grave-yard was to see his tender-hearted unforgettable mother, but his wish was not granted even after death, therefore, refusing to walk on Erebus but wanders the edge of this world and call his mother’s name choked with tears, 

“mother!”
“my son” the echo returns
“mother!”
“my son…”

After long days and nights wandering to find the source of the echo; 
without success, the exhausted ghost, fell in the woods. 
And the pathetic ghost torn to pieces and eaten 
by the hungry vicious wild beasts.

Copyright © Su Ben | Year Posted 2015

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