oh Antigone, you foolish girl.

dear circadian rhythms, dear kingdom of ends, dear rain,

Over lunch, my friend explains Cantonese idioms to me. I know that this is her way of offering me comfort, that she is trying to ground me again, tether my bloated body back down.¹ I don't say much back because I am busy fighting at the sadness that is crawling from my throat, chest, gut. I am never sure where the origination is, can never trace it back to its root. Maybe the closest thing is my navel, my center, that curled up cord that once gave me life. Now, it binds to a foggy entity which hangs around me when the sun is not out. She offers me her culture, her history, a bite of her family, a taste of time. It does not matter that she is not sawing at the taut cord, only that she is pulling it back down. The goal here is not to split myself into pieces, merely to divert my energy. To fill with sun and time and space the darkness that has been gathering.

It's fascinating how we all have different ways of sharing pain, of easing back the sadness, that black oil coagulating in lungs and tear ducts. When a pollution lies over your body, who can you rely on to perform burial rites? Who is defiant to the point of martyrdom? Who will lay you to rest? I guess not every gesture has to be grandiose, not every moment must be worthy of epics. In this, we may all be sainted. In this, we may all be worthy.

I'm sorry; I'm sorry that Oedipus is always bubbling just below the surface. I'm sorry that this is always about what it isn't about. I'm sorry that this room is too long and you are sitting at the other end of it, only blocked by miles of people and body and skin and blood and heat. I will bury your body now. I will scatter the dust and let it blow in the wind. 

1 The year is 2023. I’m editing and annotating my old letters in preparation for their rewelcoming to the world.

This particular friend is now a former friend. I hesitate to adjectivize that parting, as I will probably dedicate an entire post in the future to it (to be linked here once it exists). Really I’m adding this footnote because I can’t help but remember when I reread this what said friend’s response was to this post when I first wrote it. I wanted to know what she thought of it; she said it was fine, but she hadn’t really been trying to do anything, and she didn’t really get all that stuff at the end. Well, that’s okay, I didn’t bother to explain it — it was too big, and far too painful, which is to say personal. Either way, what she did that day at lunch meant a lot to me then, and I think this was how I was trying to thank her for it and make her aware of it all in one. Like, I knew she wouldn’t understand it, but I was desperately hoping (in my subconscious) that she would ask what it did mean. Unfortunately, what we don’t end up saying is often more important than what we do.