A Song to Drown Rivers

by Ann Liang

Often, when I was around other people and felt their gazes on me, I had the strange, encroaching sense that my face and body did not belong to me. As if I had been designed purely for the pleasure of their viewing.

And how many people under Heaven were really fortunate enough to know happiness? Happiness was a side dish, like the sweet, sticky rice cakes Mother made during the festivals, or the glutinous balls stuffed with rich sesame paste. But revenge—that was the salt of life. Necessary. Essential.

also, from a distance, everything looks more beautiful; we are better able to conjure our own fantasies about them. Sometimes the fragrance of a feast is better than the taste itself.”

When men say they want a lover, what they often mean is they want a mirror; they wish to see themselves reflected back at them in the best light.

“Still. Don’t you think there is something inherently romantic about tragedy?”

“Can you not imagine,” Luyi continued, “that it might be difficult for him to deliver you straight into the jaws of the enemy palace, and watch you marry another man? He is disciplined, Xishi,” he said as his words buzzed in my head like a wild swarm of hornets, “but he is not made of stone. He suffers too. Privately.”

“Do you know how beautiful you are?” Did he know how numb I was to hearing such lines?

There were times when he gazed at me with such pure sincerity, such boyish eagerness, that I almost forgot how much I loathed him. But I always remembered again.