A Promised Rose Garden

A Promised Rose Garden

written by: C. J. Anderson-Wu

Roses often blossom after massacres
As blood seeps into the soil
Feeding the roots
The stems, thorns and leaves
And finally the petals
The petals

Of the wronged in
Vanishing seasons
Silenced souls
Breaking through the rocky earth to breathe

To make a posthumus statement
A call for inevitable insurgence

Against the tyranny that
Never ceased to haunt our dreams

Massacres often happen before roses blossom
As blood flows away from my beating heart
Buried beneath the flowerbed of the rose garden
I had promised you

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR:

After the Tiananmen massacre in 1989, fear and anxiety gripped Hong Kong. In an effort to redirect public attention and restore morale, Governor David Wilson introduced an ambitious initiative aimed at societal recovery—the construction of a new port and airport. This undertaking was called the Rose Garden Project.

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C. J. Anderson-Wu

C.J. ANDERSON-WU (吳介禎) is a Taiwanese writer who has published fiction collections about Taiwan's military dictatorship (1949–1987), known as White Terror: Impossible to Swallow (2017) and The Surveillance (2021). Her third book Endangered Youth—Taiwan, Hong Kong, Ukraine has been launched in April 2025. Her works have been shortlisted for a number of international literary awards, including the International Human Rights Art Festival and the 2024 Flying Island Poetry Manuscript Competition. She also won the Strands Lit International Flash Fiction Competition, the Invisible City Blurred Genre Literature Competition, and the Wordweavers Literature Contest.

Latest posts by C. J. Anderson-Wu (see all)

• A Promised Rose Garden - May 7, 2025
• The Daughter of A Political Dissident - January 8, 2024