Of Love
By Michelle Li
Author’s dedication: For my aunt.
Listen to Michelle reading her piece:
The summer was immense and I was bleeding on the sidewalk. This was China, June of 2014. Nighttime and the apartment buildings skyscraper tall. The park had no gates, and children with their grandmothers flooded into the square, they brought their yo-yos, bicycles without training wheels, shiny decks of Pokemon cards, whatever they had loved at the time, and picked fights with each other. That summer, I think I had watched a bird die, but I cannot be sure of anything now. I recall my brother standing over what remains as a dark mass in my memory, a body twitching like a wet match trying to spark, twig thin legs, wings fluttering into dampening flames, and then there is blood, dark as asphalt, on the asphalt, and we cannot be sure how there can be so much; a wetted, shell shaped beak, and Ethan on the verge of tears and traffic all around, and this is what I think of when I rollerblade into the wall that night—am I dying from this pain or from this reality, that nobody saw as I pick myself up, and I might as well as live my life unnoticed? I must have always had this unexplainable sadness, so I staggered around and sat down on the stair steps in front of the frozen yogurt and apothecary shop and cried and nobody, not even I could figure out why. It was like poetry, a stirring sadness, or something ugly. Red Chinese characters slid across the screen display between the two shops and I couldn’t make out a single word through my tears, and lights everywhere, yo-yos lit up, digital watches, a boy joking about setting off a firecracker. I remember my aunt coaxing, half laughing, offering to buy frozen yogurt, sitting down on the steps next to me, and my knees looked less battered under the blistering heat, but I don’t know what any of this is supposed to mean, so that’s why I decided to become a writer. This is one of the first things I recall about childhood, but when I think childhood, I also think about dreams, and the one where I was Batman’s leading lady. In the beginning, we were poor as rats and my mother was alive—this is how all good stories start—but I was snotty enough to ask God how to find bigger loss to write about. The house we lived in sagged with heat, the whole block like tar, and I was told that to lose something great, you must become the great thing. By one miracle or the next, I walked down the street, loitered into Batman’s backyard and found him gardening, bent over daffodils and lilies like my grandmother and I knew I could love him and lose him easily. He looked up and took off his gardening gloves and asked me to the next dance and the story goes like a tragedy. He told me to wear something devastating, then stand by the bus stop at 6; I said okay and the next thing is we are waltzing under a chandelier. He says, look at me, I can’t bear for you to stop, so I look right through him and see into the night his parents died, into the night I collided into the wall, see into the hunger dabbled greatness he has wanted for so long, the people he is going to kill for it and the ceiling is breaking in half, and now we are in mist and rubble, there are two ends of cliffs. He is on the other end, the side where the grasses are green and I can see nothing else. On my side: my grandmother is pushing me to sit down, dotting antiseptic on my knees, my aunt talking about taking us through Asian malls and malls, running her hands through my hair; he reminds me that even a lifetime well lived will still end in loss, so why not save the world instead? He was convincing, his eyes marble green, so I jump, sling my body through the air like a question mark, land at his feet. I pick up my purse, gather my high heels and he has already disappeared through a shining blade of light that hovers above the grass. But I look back because grandmother is crying, and my aunt is begging her not to, but oh, she jumps anyway; they both do—grandmother’s silver streak of hair catches whatever light there is as she gracefully plummets into the abyss below, she’s still crying, I’m sure, and auntie has one hand on the edge, knuckles whitening, and the piece of stone breaks and falls along with the rest of her body—and how could I possibly even dream this, the horrible child that I am? I sat on the edge of the cliff, barefoot—the hero must go on, this life must go on, because how many things die at every given instant, but how many must die? I know he is on the other side; waiting. He didn’t laugh, but he won’t stay either. I had wanted wrongly. I tell myself this pain is how I know I am still alive, the way all memory lives and dies, these ragged moments under congested midnight, I’m still wearing something devastating like love, loving something devastating like people, but no one would know now. I ask myself: who has hurt me? I run my fingers over the crook where the stone has chipped and fallen. I think I have always been in love with people, and I learned too late that what you leave can still hurt you. What makes a good writer, then? Loss, I suppose, but I don’t know a damn thing nor am I brave enough to continue and make beauty out of anything. The thing about writing is you have to be paying attention, because no suffering lasts—either the sufferer will die, or the suffering will—and the only thing I remember is the falling motion, the gravity carrying two people towards a small plot of land, the pinpricks of light, the yo-yos, the red lettering on the screen, the singular firecracker hissing in June, the stone wall, the love for a vanishing world, Ethan crying over two bodies below; and above, the sky turned a color I didn’t know how to name, it rains over our southerly nights in China. My childhood left so soon, with a fresh flock of bird calls. I will think of death as a mercy then, a kind of door that will crack itself open. Listen, it’s morning now. And if I look downwards, there is a bruise on my knee that looks like a bird trying to escape. Sitting on the cliff, I tell my aunt I’m sorry. Sitting on the stone steps, I tell my knee to stop bleeding. The summer was immense and this time I bled out on the sidewalk. In my time of dying, I fall in love with the world, but not enough to stay[1]. This time, I’ll follow the path of freefall, with no wings.
[1] Author’s Note: This line is from a poem written by an acquaintance, but I cannot recall the title of the piece
Michelle Li has been nationally recognized by Scholastic Art and Writing, the Rising Voices Awards, and Apprentice Writer. She is an alumna of the Kenyon Review Young Writer's Workshop and her work is forthcoming or published in Aster Lit, wildscape. literary, and Third Wednesday. She edits for The Dawn Review and is the executive editor for Hominum Journal. In addition, she plays violin and piano, loves Rachmaninoff and blackberries. You can find her website at michelleli.carrd.co.