[A click. A tape recorder whirs to life and begins to listen.]

So, Xuyong and I had a mailbox at the post office where we used to leave little notes and gifts for one another. You know, when either of us were too swamped with work or whatever to meet in person. I remember that when we got it, the man at the counter was quick to stress that under no circumstances should we make a copy of the key. We went out into the street and I looked at her and her at me and we took the key, with ‘DO NOT COPY’ imprinted on the side, around and around the city until we found a convenience store owner who didn’t care enough to say no.

I... I haven’t seen her in over a year now. But etched into my mind are her hazel eyes and freckled cheeks, her long black hair and the way she speaks - always a bit out of breath, like she’d just sprinted from somewhere far away to see me. And her talented hands, the hands of an artist; and the crescent-shaped birthmark on the back of her neck, she was the moon to me, you know, the light in my night sky; and her nose and red lips and little ears and the way they play together; the way they weave amongst themselves to form her tapestry...

We decided that, uh... that it could never work out in the long run. A drunk cigarette on a rooftop feels great but it’s at least twice as bad for you as either one separately. But maybe a better example, to give you an idea of the two of us, is fire and ice. The fire melts the ice and the resulting water kills the fire. Her, the victim of a grisly murder; I, a finely crafted bullet of glass that enters her skull and shatters us both into a million pieces. Who fired the gun? Neither here nor there.

[unintelligible]

Good one, right?

Anyway - perhaps I should instead say that I decided she was too good for me. One year ago, I was drowning. Cutting my only connection to the shore (a tenuous link, to be sure; an old spool of fishing line, or a visibly rusting bronze chain joining me in being eaten by the sea) was an irrational idea, haha.

But I think that one year earlier, I was sure I was going to die. Yet I’m speaking these words to you today. I suppose that in severing her from the gnarled tree of death and grafting her back into the world, I found something to live for that I could never look away from - that I could never stop looking for.

Someone more optimistic than me would say that I loved her enough to let her go. As for myself... I’m still unsure. Hey, what do you think about that? ‘Loved her enough to let her go.’ Isn’t that something!

[5 December. Blue ink on the back of an orange manila envelope. Notes of boysenberry, plum, nutmeg, cloves, cinnamon. Splotches of tears.]

I’m writing this with the last bit of hope I have left. Will you come back and find this, or will it rot in this damned post office until it falls to pieces?

I just want to talk with you again, see your face again. Are you okay? Tell me. Do you hate me? Tell me. Anything at all. Answer your door. Call me. You said to me that we should stay away. That I should find something else I care about more than you and tend to that instead. Tell me! What am I to do? There’s no way I can interpret that instruction as something I’m capable of doing. Just tell me what you’re going through. I can help; I want to help you. I’ll sleep on the floor next to your bed to hold your hand at night. Did you know that I missed class to sit outside your door for six hours? Talk to me. Say anything.

Or don’t do any of that. I don’t care. Just tell me if you’re alive. That’s all. [text crossed out]

[Below, in charcoal pencil, slightly smudged] I love you.

I mean, look at that - mother of all clichés. She tried to hold together too much. Pushed herself too far, with school, work, social circle... and then me. Sooner or later she was bound to fall. Did I do enough to help her glide down safely, do you think? Did I at least lessen the impact?

[unintelligible]

Yeah, that’s my interpretation of things. You could see it in her face... no less beautiful, it doesn’t need to be said, but... ah, maybe I’d better say you could see it in her eyes. A glimmer, a spark of something, or perhaps the reflection of the same sun that Icarus saw. I’m certain I know... I’m certain I know at least that much about her.

My walk to the post office is carried out with about the same demeanor as a recovering alcoholic making her way over to the liquor store. My shaking hands turn the key in the lock as I imagine hers doing the same, firm and steady. A letter quickly shunted in, or one taken out and hastily shoved into my bag. Most days, nothing at all. Perhaps a gambling analogy would be better. It’s something a bit more playful - but it’s the same thing at the heart of any addiction, isn’t it?

Do I want her to live her life, a real life, far away from me and everything else that’s bad, or do I want nothing more than I want her? The little devil of a question torments me; it pounds and slams and shouts on the inside of my head and demands to be let out. Nothing’s rational in love, I say to calm it down a little. I know I’m just changing the bandages on a festering wound that will never heal.

One year earlier, as I’ve said, I was sure I was going to die. So I completed all of the funerary rites and was about to become one of those Buddhist monks who drank poison and mummified themselves. But then, instead of dying, I attained enlightenment! Or maybe that’s giving myself too much credit. Oh, you didn’t like that analogy as much as the other ones!

[unintelligible]

Haha, I can see it in your eyes. But someone who’s been shackled in the cave of our mutual friend Plato might see ‘emerging from it’ in the same way that a regular person would see ‘ascending to heaven.’ Or egg to chick as chick to chicken. Take your pick.

Anyway. What I did instead, of course, was live. And so did she. Two trees planted next to each other stretch themselves tall and thin to compete for sunlight, but spread out over a distance they’ll both grow wide to absorb as much light as possible. And yet there is that urge, that longing, isn’t there?

[To tangle the roots together?]

To burn down the entire forest. Maybe that’s what true love is.

[22 July. Black ink, heavy sketchbook paper. Notes of cigarette smoke and cedar wood.]

I wanted to get you something nice as a birthday gift, trust me, I really did, but I didn’t know what you would like. And I couldn’t think of anything so I went out for a walk and this fell on my head. Even with autumn so far away. It made me think of you for some reason. Don’t ask me why...

Are you going to classes yet? I thought I saw you on campus last Thursday but you were really far and when I got to where you were (I sprinted!) you were, of course... but that wasn’t you, right?

Hey, would you be mad if I slept with someone else?

I take everything she puts in that postbox and save it. A single leaf held on for as long as it could, taped to my wall, aeons after it had lost all hope for survival. I tried my best not to touch it, like an ancient manuscript of sorts. But in the end, uhh, in the end I inadvertently brushed against it one day and it crumbled to bits. Maybe if I had done something else - I don’t know, if I had pressed and preserved it, cataloguing it like a museum specimen. Or just spritzed it with water every other day. Or taken any course of action other than the one I took.

But I can’t bring myself to do anything drastic, can I? It’s just fate.

[Were you mad?]

I don’t fucking know. Maybe I was. I, uh, I don’t remember. If I was, though, the feeling probably cleared away pretty quickly. We’re... we’re two separate people, living two separate lives. What do you think that was all about, though? Was she trying to make me jealous or something? Come on, you must have something to say about that. Some theories?

[unintelligible]

Oh, the letters I wrote to Xuyong? Well, you’d have to ask her.

You know, sometimes I catch myself thinking ‘poor girl.’ Really, she... she did nothing wrong. It was I, not her, who let things fall apart as they did. I retreated further and further into myself and she couldn’t do anything. Not, uh, not for lack of trying, I’m sure.

Mmm... in the end, I guess it turned out all right. What do they say about hindsight? Something about rose-coloured glasses? Ah, that can’t be right. Maybe... maybe I’m mixing some things up. Poor girl. As much as it hurt me to shut her out, it must have hit her ten, twenty times harder. Breaking a chemical dependence just to find that the chemical has a dependence as well!

Ah, but who am I thinking for? Myself or someone else? Is there a difference? Poor girl.

[27 November. Annotated script for Chekhov’s ‘Uncle Vanya.’ Contents include numerous expletives, crossed-out lines with the note ‘boring’, and absentminded doodles of assorted fish. Notes... no need for the insinuations of sensations. I smell her on it.]

I don’t like this play very much. But our professor made us annotate these in class and it would be a shame to throw away. I think it’s some of my best work!

Getting colder. Stay warm.

I listened to her, by the way. Bought a new coat the day after to replace the one I used to wear - really was falling apart. It’s the only one I have now.

In a city of hundreds of thousands, who else did I have? No one. She, on the other hand, had everything - and everyone - she could need. I turned myself purple blowing a thousand balloons, tying them to a cast-out, fallen angel and sending it back up - as if to say to God, ‘in your infinite mercy you have created a being more merciful than yourself.’

[unintelligible] Why do I talk like this? Talk like what? Fuck, what were we on about before?

[unintelligible]

Maybe not, haha. I can’t imagine myself merciful, at least not by conscious choice. Hey, would you say the absence of vengeance is mercy? Don’t answer that. You know, maybe it was just the circumstances of our birth. In a different... in a different life, maybe we could have had something.

[1 August. Pen-and-ink drawing of a woman on sketchbook paper. She looks back at the artist from a train window. Her face - haughty cheekbones, pursed lips, raised eyebrows, straight-on gaze - gives the viewer the impression that they are being judged. Notes of lipstick.]

Hey, I tried to draw this girl I was talking to on the train. But it came out looking more like you.

Okay, fine, that was a bare-faced lie. Could you tell, though? Hmm?

It couldn’t have worked. Period. That’s just how we were placed on this earth. No matter how much she or I changed about myself, it would just be adding fresh coats of paint to two scorpions. There’s that essence, that... that ‘something’ at the heart of a person. Do... do you know what I’m talking about?

And, she... she could go back. I’ve got nothing to go back to. I have nothing, period. She, though - she could go back to before she met me, and live out a quiet life, and forget everything...

[You don’t mean that.]

Jeez. You can already spot my tell, hmm? Yeah, I figured. You’re good.

She told me one night I was really easy to read. Like I had all my emotions tattooed on my neck.

[17 February. Pencil: the lines are extremely thin, yet they pop out of the page like they’re screaming to be heard - likely 0.5 mm lead, 2B at least. Lined notebook paper. Notes of leather, smoke. And wet hair - did she write this out of the shower? God, I...]

Saint Valentine’s day has come and gone and I still find myself thinking of you.

P.S. You can get these at crazy discounts right now. [Attached is an unopened package of chocolate.]

There was a night in November - I can’t, uhh, can’t remember which exactly - when I was drinking and then took some pill or another. Of course it was a bad idea, haha. I know, I know. Anyway, I panicked and called her four times... she didn’t pick up, but I remember blacking out on my floor and waking up in my bed. That part’s all very vivid, in my mind... jolting awake, cold sweat, but the wind is cold and refreshing - I look to my left, my curtains dance and sway with life, as if to invite me back to health, and I look to my right and she’s out cold holding my hand.

So what do you make of that one, hmm? Oh, why she didn’t call the paramedics? Oh, who... who knows?

[31 December. Black pen on yellow sticky note. Hints of the special taste of sea air when you’re alone.]

Hey, happy New Year’s Eve. I’m thinking about a lot today. I’m sure you are as well.

Xuyong. New Year’s Eve was something for us; more than the actual day itself, I think. The promise of change, the infinite branching paths laid out ahead of us. Even as we knew... sorry. It’s nothing. But I know... I know it meant a lot to the both of us.

Xū - 虚: Emptiness. Void. A house with the windows open, a strong breeze blowing, but no furniture. You know what I’m talking about? Just exposed floorboards. Promise - infinite promise - but at the same time a sense of loss. A blank canvas - a tabula rasa.

Yǒng - 永: Forever. Always. Eternal. Perpetual. Ceaseless... fuck, what else?

[Sisyphean?]

Good one. That’s a really good one, actually. Ah... my perpetual blank slate. Someone I could project myself onto. My fears, my insecurities, my ideals... a mirror, written on with blood so that every little bit added is also a little bit taken away.

My eternal void. A little hole in my side, not leaking blood or anything, but just there. And then I look down and there’s a part of me that’s just gone. But, do you understand, it’s still a part of me, even in its absence - or even more so for it.

Or, how about it’s a gaping maw. An endless void, an all-consuming mouth. Whether it eats you up or you reach in yourself, it doesn’t matter. It takes all of you. It takes everything.

But what’s with the word ‘my,’ hmm? Possessive, don’t you think? Arrogant, perhaps. Maybe there’s a bit of greed in there, too. Wanting something you can’t ever get. Trying to read the unreadable, to measure the depth of a bottomless pit. Wanting to hold something - someone - for ‘forever.’

Is anything forever? Burns, bite marks, scars that map out a city, a city of etched initials and stolen kisses in alleyways and glass shards on rain-slicked concrete. Evidence. It all fades away in time. And even so, it might as well be forever for me. Not for anyone else - in time I’ll be dead and buried. Her, too - forgotten in the whirlwind of history. But as long as I live, she’ll be my ‘forever.’

God, that’s so selfish.

[unintelligible]

Oh, I’m so sorry. I must have been rambling.

Is that all? Okay. [...] Yeah, with Christmas coming up you must be quite busy. [...] No, thank you... I guess I really did just need someone to talk to. Anyway, why did... [unintelligible]

Oh. I... poor girl.

[The recording ends with a click.]

[6 April. A grainy photograph of a girl posing in front of the Eiffel tower. She’s wearing a white blouse and a faded pair of baggy blue jeans. She holds up two peace signs and smiles widely, hazel-coloured eyes barely visible. Notes of... of a comfortably oblivious life in the suburbs. Photographer unknown]

Hey. Went to Paris last week. I miss you.

The air is cold, but calm and windless. The chill brushes against my face not like a bite, but like a caress. A bus rolls past and I inadvertently inhale the exhaust. The thin layer of snow on the sidewalk has been marred by countless sets of footsteps...

Hiding the words I actually want to say behind more words. That’s just like me, isn’t it? That’s what you’d say, right? Xuyong?

That girl who came by the other day seemed like she’d be just your type.

I am walking down a street I know all too well. A bar I got thrown out of a few months back. A dimly lit bookstore where you stole a kiss from me behind a shelf of pulp novels. Red light. I can still see you waiting on the corner, a hundred times over. No, it isn’t the street. All I know about this city is you.

In my inner coat pocket is a yellowed envelope tied with string. It’s been marked with cigarette ash and spilled drinks. Pencil shavings and splotches of ink, evidence of my indecision. There’s the post office.

I walk back into the street and exhale deeply - I need a cigarette, I realize. My hands can’t stop shaking as I light one up, the reflected light of the little flame dancing on my palm.

Maybe you’ll find that letter one day.

The train station is a place I love, and sometimes I’ll come here just to be here. Alone, of course. Totally isolated in a sea of people, as lonely as can be in a crowd. Looking for you, maybe.

Today I’m here with more purpose than usual. Shoved deep into my left pocket, my hand clutches a ticket to somewhere. To anywhere. My other hand tightly grasps a duffel bag, the handle digging into my skin. Looking up at a departure board as I pass by, something catches my eye.

Dark hair. A crescent streak of pink above her right eye, itself a deep hazel. A stylish black coat, a chunky grey scarf. Sleek leather gloves hide a set of delicate, slender fingers. I look back down.

I wore makeup today. My hair is in my eyes. I’m wearing a coat that she made me buy and that she’s never seen in her life. I’m a (new) woman. My face is covered but all the masks are off.

Have I ever shown you my true face before? Or did you see through it all, and see it for yourself?

Did I only want to change for her? To present perfection? To give her everything she wanted, in a form that wasn’t me?

And now I’m in a form that really is me, the real me, and she doesn’t know, she doesn’t see, she can’t see; there’s no way she could know...

It’s only a few meters, but the apprehension grasps me in its chains like it’s forever.

We pass each other by. It’s over in a moment, but it has to be her. I inhale deeply. Her. It has to be her.

How long was that moment for you, Xuyong?

Keep moving, I think. Moving on, it’s... it’s the best thing for us both.

[31 December. Hints of snowfall, melting watches, gusts of late autumn wind and fluttering curtains, ‘squeeze my hand if you’re alive’ and the trepidation found in those moments of waiting, only a second at most but longer than anything I’ve ever known...]

Passing a hair’s breadth away, my heartbeat stills. In that moment, we were so close, we could have touched. People are shouting, shoving, rushing like ocean currents; I see arrival times and smell engine smoke but in the eye of my heart all I see is you. And I pull away, make for the exit, wrap my coat tighter around me and disappear into the waiting crowds; puffs of hot breath are smoke bombs in the snowy winter air...

I don’t look back. I don’t need to. I know that was you. I knew all along.

And I am left with an indelible feeling - the sensation of ice water, the open floodgates of a dam, pouring and rushing over the dying embers in my heart - oh, what could have been!

Under the twinkling string lights, snowflakes multiply on my wool hat. If tears had emerged they would have frozen on my face. What could have been!

But a future now gone, the branch of a fig tree retreating from my grasp as I clutch a fruit greedily in my hand, a ‘what could have been’ - what is that worth? If anything, if anything at all?