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.

My memory had not done his beauty justice, just as remembered pain was always duller than actual pain.

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.

One could live with almost anything, so long as they had something to live for.

Later, though, I would wish I had stayed longer. Woken them up, held them close. Given them the chance to say a proper goodbye. But such things only occur to you in hindsight, framed by the before and after of everything you’ve endured; when it is still happening, all you care about is what lies ahead.

If my beauty was of the destructive kind, his was a beauty that pressed exquisitely close to sorrow; something as cold and untouchable as the stars scattered overhead.

It was considered a great offense to have the head of a fish dish turned toward the king; an offense to make audible noises while chewing in the king’s presence. It seemed to me that the problem lay more with the king; who else would have the energy to be offended by nearly everything?

In a world where everyone will demand something from you, it requires a certain degree of selfishness to be happy, you know.”

“We are most tempted by what we cannot have. Men will dream of the mountains they have yet to scale, the rivers they have yet to set sail upon, the plains they have yet to conquer. They are told from birth everything belongs to them, and so when something does not, they view it as a personal challenge.” I thought about it longer. “But 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.”

“The heart is a fickle thing; it takes and takes. It is easily swayed, and tempted, and made weak. Too many have fallen victims to their own irrational desires. But the mind—the mind is dependable, accurate, deadly. It destroys the enemy, not the self, and ensures that we do what we need to, not what we want.”

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.

only the wealthy could show such joyous carelessness in an age of war and instability. They assumed their money protected them from everything. The ultimate injustice was that sometimes it did.

“What would you like to see?” he asked, tilting his head. There was a rare touch of uncertainty to his demeanor too. “I will follow you.” “Really? Anywhere?” “Anywhere,” he said.

What a bittersweet fate we shared, balanced so precariously on the fine line between life and death, union and separation, joy and despair.

These were the rules that shaped our lives from when we were born: Be beautiful, be charming, be the most coveted girl in the room, or else you will be nothing. For men, it was so easy; the path to power was so direct. But we had to manipulate and maneuver and claw our way to gain half of what they did.

Be careful, I wanted to warn her, a pang in my chest, that old affliction of the heart. Love is a knife; it cuts both ways.

This was how everything started. This was how everything came to an end.

Perhaps history would remember him as a hero. But a hero to many was still a villain to one.

So long as we continue to put mortal men on thrones and hail them as gods, sacrifice our lives to their legacies, history will repeat itself. Just as the ocean tides ebb and flow beneath the moon, empires will rise and collapse, wars will start and cease, and the rest of us will be left to struggle against the currents.