So this is life.  This is what they mean when they say life isn’t always fair.

                Up until the last minute when everything is going right, luck won’t do anything but turn against you. 

                Spending an entire lifetime with a fear of falling short to others will always bring a sorry ending. 

The reason for breathing was the same as having hope of remembering all that I’ve lost.  Only to have the person I depend on push me down.

                When there’s an uphill, there will be a downhill.  I take one step forward, to be pulled two steps back.

                So what is left to hang on to?

* * *

                The gloom of my apartment welcomes me like the open arms of a distant dream.  A nightmare now, but its home nonetheless.

                She begins to rub my arm affectionately, but I tell her to go home, greedy for loneliness.  In fact, I don’t want to hear her comforting words.  I don’t want to hear her tell me everything will be all right.  They’re all lies anyway.

                She looks reluctant to leave, but I don’t force her.  It’s easy to watch people leaving me.  I feel that I should be accustomed to that by now.

When the door shuts, I’m isolated once again.  The world is still spinning yet I’m sitting here, still lodged in this unknown presence. 

Nothing has changed.

                I light a candle and place it on the nightstand again, like I always do, because nothing has changed.  I open the drawer, receive the photographs—feeling like I haven’t touched them in so long—and scatter them at the side of the bed.  Just like I always do.  My handwritten notes and pen follow. 

Lastly, the box, now closed, is pulled out of the closet for the second time, joining the rest of the artifacts. 

                Everything is rounded up, lying insipidly at the foot of the nightstand and beside the bed.  The floor is covered in mismatched papers and photographs once again.

The two birth certificates, belonging to two humans that were never meant for this earth, are heavy between my fingers.  Like the first time I held them.

I stand closer to the light, to read over the printed words one last time.

                Huang Zitao.  You useless thing.  Whoever told you to look at these things anyway?  Were they even meant for you?  Why does it matter to remember?

Nothing has changed.  And nothing ever will.  I’ve never remembered.  And I never will remember. 

One lifetime wasted is nothing.  It’s all right.  I’ve been through enough. I’ve tried hard enough.  I’ve had enough.

And so, I hold the birth certificates over the flame of the candle as it flickers against the dark walls.  Until the ink, paper and the past, singes and shrivels to a black char.