In Memory of Liu Xiaobo on the Eighth Anniversary of His Passing
作者：金米
编辑：王梦梦 责任编辑：罗志飞 鲁慧文 翻译：鲁慧文
他死得太安静了，像一个知道结局的旧派先生，衣扣系好，字写整齐，然后慢慢地闭上眼睛，把命送还给这个世界。没有惊动人，没有弄脏床单，没有留下多余的话。他的死，像他的一生：克制、温和、干净——干净得的近乎残忍。
不是他残忍，是这个世界太怕他干净。他没有敌人，很多人却把他当做敌人。
他们不肯放他出狱，说是他病了，其实是他们怕他活着。怕他瘦下来的每一寸肉，都写着不屈。怕他咳嗽的时候，连字也在纸上震动。怕一个无权无势的人，比他们更有存在的理由。
他们说他死于癌症，海水却知道，那不是病死，是耗尽。他把一生燃烧，烧得别人脸红，却又无可奈何。他死前看不到海，骨灰才被撒进去了海里。
海不会纪念谁。潮涨潮落时，每一滴都忘记了前一滴。可我们记得。他的骨灰，像一首被封锁的诗，无处落脚，永远漂浮在国家的边缘。
他死了，那些人松了口气。可他们忘了，一具被焚尽的骨头，比一口未说完的话更重。
7月13日2025年
金米
In Memory of Liu Xiaobo on the Eighth Anniversary of His Passing
By Jin Mi
Edited by Wang Mengmeng | Chief Editors: Luo Zhifei, Lu Huiwen | Translated by Lu Huiwen
He died too quietly, like an old-fashioned gentleman who already knew the ending—his shirt buttoned, his handwriting neat, then slowly closed his eyes and returned his life to this world.
He disturbed no one, stained no sheets, left behind no excess words.
His death mirrored his life: restrained, gentle, clean—so clean it bordered on cruelty.
It wasn’t him who was cruel. It was the world that feared his purity.
He had no enemies, yet many treated him as one.
They refused to release him, saying he was ill, but the truth is—they feared him alive.
Feared that every inch of his emaciated body spelled defiance.
Feared that even his cough would shake the characters on the page.
Feared that a man with no power and no privilege had more reason to exist than they did.
They said he died of cancer. But the sea knows—it wasn’t illness, it was depletion.
He burned through his life, burned it so fiercely it made others blush—yet left them helpless.
He couldn’t see the sea before he died; only his ashes were scattered into it afterward.
The sea remembers no one. As the tide rises and falls, each drop forgets the last.
But we remember.
His ashes are like a banned poem, unable to find a resting place,
forever drifting at the margins of the nation.
He is gone, and those people breathed a sigh of relief.
But they forgot—
A body reduced to ashes weighs more than words left unsaid.
July 13, 2025
By jin Mi
