Lemon

by Kwon Yeo-Sun

The imagination is just as painful as reality. No, it’s more painful. After all, what you imagine has no limit or end.

Did the pages of his life hold any meaning? Probably not. At least that’s what I believe. Life has no special meaning. Not his, not my sister’s, not even mine. Even if you try desperately to find it, to contrive some kind of meaning, what’s not there isn’t there. Life begins without reason and ends without reason.

Unable to penetrate the fortress of their relationships, I found myself outside its walls, completely alone.

Like those who had no idea their youth was gone, I’d lost myself without realizing it.

“Death carves a clear line between the dead and the living,” she said in a solemn tone. “The dead are over there and the rest of us are over here. When someone dies, no matter how great they were, it’s like drawing a permanent line between that person and the rest of humanity. If birth means begging to join the side of the living, then death has the power to kick everyone out. That’s why I think death, with its power to sever things forever, is far more objective, more dignified, than birth, which is the starting point of everything.”

“Death turns us into junk. In the blink of an eye, we become meaningless, like scraps.”

“I want to believe … but I can’t. How can I, when things I can’t possibly understand are happening all over the world?”

Does life leave only misery behind? Could the fact that we’re alive—the fact that we’re in this life where joy and terror and peace and danger mingle—couldn’t that itself be the meaning of life?

been warm and exquisitely alive, just like a bird about to take flight? Couldn’t each moment we’re living now be the meaning of life?