Searching for Sylvie Lee

by Jean Kwok

Nowadays, we all lived in a time boundary when emotion defeated logic, an era when gut feeling reigned over rationality. There was no patience for the difficult, the indecipherable, yet what else was the human heart but that?

“Yes and no. But I learned that if you do not speak, no one will ever hear you.”

That gold was too soft, helpless in its purity, too yielding to be of this world. Like my mother and me, it belonged to an age gone by. Its strength was in its ability to bend, but how much could it withstand before it broke for good?

“When you love someone, there is no shame. When I see you, I only know that you are my grandma and you are beautiful. You did this for me when I was young. Now it is my turn. You always said, the old become children once again.”

Helena’s eyes glittered with naked intensity. I could not tell if they were filled with greed or a desperate need to be loved. I was not even sure if it made a difference: it came down to hunger. Perhaps those desires all stemmed from the same place in our broken, burdened hearts.

They taught us to keep our heads low, to hold our secrets as closed as an oyster. Keep ourselves apart from everyone else. At a certain point, you wind up dividing yourself internally into so many different people you do not even know who you are anymore.”

In love and life, we never know when we are telling ourselves stories. We are the ultimate unreliable narrators.

while nothing can replace that which is lost, emptiness creates room for new growth.