Dragon tears.

During the fours years she lived in that small town of China (where no small town is ever small), the teacher had an immense calligraphy hanging on the wall, a flying dragon painted in rice paper, its wings disseminating bliss and joy throughout the corners of the small apartment. Made of one stroke only, it had on the side two similar ideograms representing Buddha’s truthful and merciful name.
After that phase in her career, she would move unto another town, another city, another lifetime. As she packed the little she owned in China, she took the image off the wall and said, as if in a little prayer or oath, “You have given me joy and fortune while I lived here. I will keep you close to me, to my heart, and you will be a permanent companion in my journey all the way through the world, in each house I’ll inhabit.
After 34 years, as the older teacher was moving all the boxes she had accumulated in each stop of her life, she found the cardboard tube in which she kept the immense roll, so many years back.
In the brushed loop where the dragon’s head was supposed to be, there was a blot that could be seen either as if someone splashed water over it or if an enduring rain found its perfect portrait in the paper. One or way or the other, they looked like the dragon’s own tears, shed for unkept promises.