Ten.
Fear—a seedling buried in secret
But you know, I don't want to bother you in the slightest. Not at all.
This fear walks with me all the time—the way a shadow walks. Where there is light, there is shadow, and this affection is light—so fear's shadow is always there too. Love and fear are twin children of the same mother—when you have one, you have the other. Because to love someone is to fear losing them, to fear annoying them, to fear them drifting away—these are all reflections of love itself, seen in a mirror held backwards.
And yet, to hurt the person you love seems to be my curse.
The closer I want to get, the more I seem to wound somewhere—the way holding someone too tightly stops them from breathing. If you hold love in a tight grip, it crumbles; if you hold it too loosely, it flies away. How hard to grip—no book teaches this; it is learned only through mistakes, and something breaks with each one. I write to you and fear—am my tight embrace suffocating you?
I wrote to you so long ago.
Then every day I would wait—perhaps you'll read it today, perhaps you'll glance at it today, perhaps you'll write back even one word—one word is enough, one punctuation mark is enough, even a 'hmm' is enough. Days would pass, no reply would come. Silence would accumulate—but that silence was not heavy; it was almost light, because within it lived a possibility: if reading it would upset you, then not reading it is better. Silence is at least not cruel.
Nearly a full moon has turned since I wrote—I live in fear—like someone who secretly plants a sapling in someone else's garden and watches from afar, heart racing—will the garden owner see it? If they do, will they be angry? Will they tear it out? Or will they water it? Then at some point I understood—perhaps they don't even go into the garden; the sapling will grow on its own or wither—both will happen without my knowing. There was no sorrow in that either. Only the fear diminished, and in its place came a quiet acceptance—so much of life remains unfinished like this, and that too is a kind of ending. Not all stories have conclusions—some stories simply stop, and that stopping is their conclusion.
Yet within this fear and waiting, there is a kind of joy found nowhere else.
That waiting is only suffering—this is the world's greatest lie. Waiting holds a sweet ache, a tremor, an incompleteness—which is far more beautiful than wholeness. Because wholeness is still—it does not move, does not tremble, does not astonish. Wholeness is a completed sentence—once read, there is nothing more. But incompleteness is alive—it moves, trembles, breathes, asks, seeks answers, sometimes finds them, sometimes does not—and that not-finding is itself a finding, because it keeps you alive, gives you reason to search.
Since writing to you, I have felt this truth in my bones.
Eleven.
Resentment—anger when it borrows love's name
Good morning. How are you?
You know, I'm quite angry.
I discovered an old mistake this morning when I woke—the way a wound is revealed when you lift the cloth that covers it; the wound hasn't healed yet, blood may have clotted but the pain remains intact, hiding beneath the skin, waking at the slightest touch. I have been waiting for you while life goes on—no one asked me to wait, I decided it myself, I have lost by myself—and loss has no excuse, because I was playing this game alone, arranging the chessboard alone, making moves alone, losing alone.
Should I be just a little upset with you?
I truly cannot tell—whether this feeling is anger, or resentment, or simply another name that love goes by. The way fever is not actually illness but the body's fight—not the disease, but the resistance.
Perhaps this anger too is something like that—fever coursing through the body of love, and it struggling, fighting to survive, to endure. I can be angry with you—and that itself is proof of how close you are. Does one grow angry at a stranger?
Twelve.
The Last Letter—You Cannot Hold Back the Wind
I’ve been thinking of you so very, very much.
I said ‘very’ twice—because once isn’t enough. Some feelings cannot be captured in a single word—so people say the same word twice, three times, as if repetition might deepen it. But really, even repetition falls short—the feeling itself is larger than any word, larger than any sentence, larger than language itself.
You know, I truly thought I wouldn’t speak to you again.
I would slip away quietly—the way clouds disperse when rain stops, without saying goodbye, without a sound; the sky turns blue again, and no one asks where the cloud has gone. Clouds have no address, no name—they simply come and go, and in their coming and going the world grows a little wet, a little green, then dries, and waits again. I wanted to leave like that too—silently, soundlessly.
But I couldn’t.
The truth is, some departures are impossible. Some people cannot be forgotten. Some words cannot go unsaid. No matter how you try, the words lodge in your throat, your fingers itch to write, your heart writhes—and finally, defeated, you write again, speak again, return again—because it isn’t born of conscious will, it simply happens.
The way one grows resentful with those closest to us—even without the right, you do, because the heart knows nothing of rights, only of pull—I’m feeling that toward you.
How strange! Is it you who are so extraordinary? Or am I the one who’s mad? Does everyone become so much your own—or is it only me afflicted with this disease? Is it an epidemic—touching everyone, or a rare ailment—that only I have caught? Which would have been better—I don’t know.
You know, I read many people’s writings. But I feel no urge to speak to any of them—I read, set it down, move on, the way one walks past many shops on the street but enters none.
Only your shop do I want to enter. Only at your door do I want to stand—not to go in, just to stand there. The way a devotee stands outside a temple—there’s no need to go inside, no need to see the god with these eyes, merely being near is worship, simply standing there is prayer.
You are so far away—and yet you drift into my imagination whenever you please, uninvited, without hesitation—the way wind enters. Even with doors and windows shut, through some crack it seeps in, and everything in the room stirs a little—the curtains move, papers flutter, the candle flame trembles. You are that wind—you slip into my room, and everything stirs.
And I do not hold you back. I let you come. Because this coming—this is mine. This is all I have. This is enough.
This manuscript was never published. Some manuscripts are not written for publication—they are written to burn.
And the one it was written for—is neither a name, nor a face, nor an address. It is only that darkness—without which the glowing of a firefly holds no meaning.
I would rather live as darkness. Some darkness is beautiful.