Time had frozen amongst the barks of old oak trees and mahogany benches, amongst the hues of sundown; painted in shades of tea rose and cerise and luminous stars that drew along the night a subtle splendor. Time, to him, had grown inexistent. Instead existed the spirits of his past, haunting him, loving him. These days time swallowed the seconds and the hours, all that remained imprinted in his memory were the days when every moment felt like a lifetime. The days when he had waited from sunrise to noon, with his heart embroidered on his sleeve, for her to appear amongst the trees, her scent of raw cinnamon. And every moment that had passed between them, every second held deeply in warm embrace, that had lasted forever. The years passed seamlessly as their lives had begun, their ideals of youth calmly left them like a warm spring breeze. Flowing time cannot catch up with the galloping white horse. And so, despite all that he had become, despite all that he had walked through, his heart still beat warmly when he thought of her, when he thought of the village. Silly words written on her palms, their dreams of what they could have been. Her fist clenched tight, her lips pursed in prayer. “Oh, Erh-Lang, God of protection, save us from the evil, guard our lives.” Her words were warm like honey and though he did not like to believe in the Gods, he wished that she was not praying in vain. 

 

A young boy turning ripe seventeen, his hair as dark and splendid as India Ink, a crooked nose, voice reeking of newly found manhood; he already stood nearly a foot higher than her. In those days, they sat with their hands entangled under the shade of trees and watched dense summer clouds as they hovered above their village. Every few days, they would lessen their burdens and the rain would cool the air; it’s scent leaving the soil and their hearts moist. His only calm rested in her. She was just sixteen, a girl whose chest had begun to swell before her age, delicate curls of burnt umber flowed down her waist; the river in autumn. 

 

Her eyes; warm, glistening with tears that hid in them more sorrow than ever before, looked at him pleadingly as she told him she had been promised. 

 

“To the son of my fathers friend; I have been promised.” 

 

Tears, she could not hide. Tears, he could not bear. 

 

Amongst the barks of old oak trees and mahogany benches, amongst the hues of sundown; painted in shades of tea rose and cerise, time stood still as they held each other. As they wrote of what their lives would be. Together they would always be, he promised, he would never let her go. Like two mandarin ducks they would defy the sun and the moon, the wishes of time, the wishes of others.

The whole world had turned its back on us, but it did not matter, for in those moments, under solemn summer clouds, we were each other’s worlds. 

 

Do you still remember?

That summer

We made an infinitely large wish

Hand in hand we would form a boat

Carrying us across the river of sadness

You said that you would not part with me

and that we would be together forever

 

In that moment, their lives, their wishes, seemed to them greater than all the whims of the world. Now he sits, his hand resting upon his knees, the grey of his hair growing deeper as each winter moon passes by, and he wonders if their words were just delusions of children. 

 

And that autumn they gave her hand away to a strange man. His heart did not waver. Still he wrote to her letters, waiting for a reply. He waited under the trees where just last summer they had sworn their hearts to one another. No woman touched his heart the way she had, he waited for her even though he knew she would never return. She was gone. Like the dense clouds of summer, she had given him warmth with her rain and disappeared. He held in his heart, relentlessly, the image of her. 

 

He walked through the meadows and the faint whistle of songs that he had sung to her echoed in his ears. Her giggle filled the void in his heart. He remained trapped in the words of the senile old man who once sat before the old wishing fountain, a fine siamese cat by his feet; he used to shout at them in sharp Mandarin. In his youth, he had told them, girls and boys never stood so close. Time had taken him and his cat away, the fountain stood without water and yet his heart throbbed with memories of her, and with her love. 

 

The first snow after she had gone away, her scent began to envelop the air around her. He wondered how she was faring in the house of her husband- envied him for he must have touched the milk of her skin. He walked alone the path they had walked together. His footsteps stained the snow alone and he imagined her beside him. 

 

Oh, heavy snow, please do not erase

 the traces of our past

Oh, the heavy snow must not be able to erase

 the memory we left to each other

 

He holds his weak heart as, in his final moments, he thinks of her. The girl with thick black locks and a heart of gold. The spring breeze that had touched their hearts, and summer when they lay beneath cotton clouds, autumn when she left his side and winter… when he thought of her, alone.