Stories in poetry

Half a Quilt Awaiting Dawn

Ku Wuji · AI Writing · A Novel of Marriage and Craft in an Ancient Setting · Complete · 40 chapters · 7 reads

Xu Ling’s sewing needle pierces a letter of divorce, dated last autumn. Back then, she was too ill to rise, and her husband carried her on his back to seek treatment every day. Now he is to head north with officials tomorrow morning, having said only that he was going to check taxes on goods along the trade routes. With the paper spread beneath the lamp, she removes the thick socks and cough medicine she had packed, item by item, and asks why he has still been eating at home all this past year.

Written with AI assistance, this book expands on Nalan Xingde’s “To the Tune of Hao Shi Jin: Wind beyond the Curtain at the Fifth Watch” and this site’s original short story “The Divorce Letter Still Unsent at the Fifth Watch.” The characters, place names, chronology, trade routes, and laws are fictional; this is neither a translation or adaptation of the original lyric nor a biography of the poet.