Where Reasons End

by Yiyun Li

I didn’t want to explain: A mother’s job is to enfold,

Would you call it a tragedy? he said. I would only say it’s sad. It’s so sad I have no other adjectives left.

Promises are made not to be kept, he said. Love is made not to last, I said.

Who can say to love doesn’t also mean to disappoint and to deceive? I said. Those who disappoint or deceive don’t always do so from love, he said.

Days: the easiest possession, requiring only automatic participation. The days he had refused would come, one at a time. Neither my allies nor my enemies, they would wait, every daybreak, with their boundless patience and indifference, seeing if they could turn me into a friend or an enemy to myself. Never apologize, I said, for what you have let go.

Turning around was not a mistake, because no lesson could be learned.

Fuddled, muddled, befuddled, I said. Every time you say something I have to turn to the dictionary. Every word has ten more definitions I have missed.

Too late, I said. To love is to trespass.

Wouldn’t a self-help book rather be talking about healing? I said. No self-help book would sell if it told you that the wound would stay open.

If you have a thousand dollars, it’s easy to make up a plan about the money. But if you have a life, do you understand what a life is, do you know what to do with it?