Searching for Sylvie Lee

by Jean Kwok

Now I know why Dutch painters were obsessed with the sky. Stretched above the flat landscape, the morning boils and eddies, the roiling clouds battling a single sharp patch of obstinate sunlight.

As Sylvie told me once, we are all ultimately unreliable storytellers of our own lives, whether we wish it so or not, whether we share a common language or not. The only reliable narrators are to be found in books.

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