On Either Side of the Bridge

1. She loves you, but you do not love her. So much so that you need not measure the depth of her love—her very existence becomes a torment to you! In such cases, the shallower the love, the deeper the pain.

2. You love someone who does not love you back. Try as you might, you never catch their eye; they simply looked away, looked through you. Do not grieve—most love stories, truth be told, go something like this.

3. Your own person loves another right before your eyes. You wail and protest for a day or two, then accept it all in silence. What else can you do? Then you console yourself: "At least they are still here, within my sight! At least I kept them from going to the one they love!" In time you will see that neither of you loves the other, yet you remain together—and perhaps always will. This is the world's law, the dharma of the household, the fate of life! It is really helplessness, the punishment of having to live by custom and convention.

4. Two people love each other madly, yet hide it away. If only we could speak our hearts as freely as we did in childhood! Growing up has one terrible cost: you cannot tell just anyone what your heart holds.

5. You were meant to rest your head on one shoulder, yet you share a bed with another. You were never meant to marry this person, and yet you maintain a household with them! Yes, this is what life is. Life is such a strange place—you can spend day after day beside someone without loving them, bound by some spell or mere habit.

6. The girl you fell in love with—you once yearned to be the father of her bright, beautiful child. Yet she has gone into another man's home. She has borne two daughters, but their father is someone else. And still you sit and plan: if you have a daughter, you'll give her a name woven together with hers!

7. The dream you two once imagined fulfilling together—both of you—when that dream comes to mind on some lazy afternoon, you still laugh alone, yet that dream itself no longer lives.

8. You two were meant to meet again... forget it! Both of you deliberately take the same road, wanting to forget, wanting not to be seen by each other—but alas, the meeting does not happen!

9. You both want to flee from each other, neither wants to be seen—yet you meet! Your mind is full of so many things unsaid, but when you do meet, none of it remains. Not a word comes to mind.

10. No one is with anyone, and never will be. Yet there is something—a pull, a fierce sensation. This invisible bond intoxicates them both, drowns them in deep regret. There is no explanation for it, no logic! Perhaps no meaning at all.

11. In this life you have sworn that in the next, you will make no more sacrifices. You will love each other in that life—you will remain together, loving. How long can one live without love! Since you could not stay together in this life even with your love, you console yourselves with this thought: perhaps in the next life... But apart from literature, does the next life even exist?