It is not the green rice fields

I have left behind that tease

my solitude with sadness. It is

not the simple unpaved roads

that guided me to serenity that

plague my mind. It is not the

penetrating sun rays that would

sustain life that I often find myself

lamenting over. It is not my

voyage or my aspirations. It is not

my family that I cry for, my unsweet

mother and laughless father whom

I’ve left behind. My pain does

not come from hard work, not

from the fourteen hours a day-six days a week marathons.

My suffering is not derived from

the labor that my hands and my

body have gone through,

it has aged me more years than

I have lived. My journey to the

land of smoke was not pleasure,

it was full of challenges and

loveless encounters; but I do not

weep for my experience. It is not

the air nor the sun that longs for me,

not the children or the toil; it is not

the morning or the sunset that draws

my tears- it is the thought that

I believed the illusion that this

factory was a better life than what

I left behind. I cry for me, and

the death of the idea.