From the bed, she says, “You can leave if it’s too late,” thinking, “What else do I have left if she leaves?,” thinking, “I could make do if she stays here a bit longer. I bet I could learn to love her the way she loves my suffering,” wondering, “Should I let her stay? After all is through, she will be just another stranger,” thinking,” thinking, “Whatever. I can still see her on the bus platforms or someplace other,” thinking, “If I stay quiet, I can hear her footsteps echo from the asphalt street leading to her shelter, and the storm never gets worse nor better,” saying again, “Perhaps you could stay.”
“To do what? To hurt you in another language?”
“What does it matter? But that’s not what I mean.”
“Then what do you mean?”
“I just don’t want you to be another stranger.”
The light is off, one window after another. But inside the apartment in the corner, the cigarette light keeps flaring up one hour to the next. The leaves are silent, and the sky is dark. The storm is brewing. From the east, the light is crawling out of its cave like some sort of creepy insect trying to hang onto the one opportunity to live. From the west, the ominous wind blows a raging anger. Leaves upon leaves are falling, finding a hiding place on the dampened earth. The rain of yesterday has not disappeared yet. Its footsteps and its breath still linger in the hanging branches, under the shadows of the carved balcony. If you are desperate enough, you will think that the scene is almost a beauty. But the girl on the chair is nowhere near the faintest definition of the word “desperate.” She snuffs her cigarette, saying, “I’m going,” thinking, “God knows I will come back here whenever she’s calling,” thinking, “If God had known how hard it is to live, why must He make humans a lonely race?” looking at dawning sky, thinking, “The stars are all dead,” saying, inadvertently, “Do you want me to stay?”
The girl on the bed puts the cup of cold coffee cup on the nightstand, turns down the shaded lamp, and burrow her head into the pillow. “Who knows, I’m too tired for that.” But when she hears the doorknob turns and the faltering footsteps fade away, she sits up on her bed again, looking wildly about the darkened room, thinking, “You say you don’t know but you are hurting me again, and this is not even another language.”
The storm growls. The windows tremble under the weight of the millions of lives before and the millions of lives after. This is not a story. This is just how you hurt her in another language.
