A Single Swallow

by Zhang Ling

When he said all this, I was grateful I was a dog. If I were unlucky enough to be a human, my Millie, there might have been a mountain between us, and I would’ve had to sing countless love songs for months before I finally dared lick you for the first time.

Now, even though I’m gone, I’ve had you fully, and I left myself fully with you, sweet Millie. So we’ll never be apart, really. We’ll always have a piece of each other.

“Ugly things need to be covered, but pretty things don’t.”

He gave me the most precious thing in life, the freedom to love. For that reason alone, he deserved the sacrifice of my life.

my sorrow was like dust filling the sky, with no place to settle. I didn’t know how to grieve, so I was just angry with you. No, not angry. That’s too frivolous a word. I think I hated you. I hated you for abandoning me

I hated you for

leaving without hesitation, not even look...

I would rather riddle you with hate than have a trace of contempt for you. If I have to choose between hate and contempt, then I choose hate.

Despite all this, I can’t help but love you. I even love your ambitions and vanity. I love you completely.

My master is a strange woman. She’s never said the word “need” to me or anyone else. She guards that word as she guards her life.

But neither Stella nor Wende are her real name. When you examine these names, the selfishness of the people who call her by them becomes clear. Pastor Billy expects her to give him direction during his days of wandering, and Ian longs for her to be a breath of fresh air in his life while he’s cut off from the outside world.

I know the name she least likes to be called is Ah Yan. That’s the name her mother gave her

She realized that the future was a heavy thing to carry.

Love was the only thing that could make someone lose their courage like that, transforming from a powerful warrior to a terrified wretch.

Nothing can comfort someone undone by love.

“God, I beg you, take their secrets away! Make it as if I never had ears. Why must I only listen to their secrets? Do I have no secrets of my own? Why? Why?”

Life is nothing but a series of such overlaps and interminglings.

Everyone knew there were only a few such days in our lifetimes, so we did what we could to make a lifetime of those days.

To the person who is leaving, the attraction of what lies ahead is greater than what lies behind. Recollection is something that is left for later.

Before I had ever really seen the sky, I’d lost my desire to fly.

You walked with the wind under your feet, because you were the only one still called by the name your mother gave you.

That place where Ah May dragged her feet—will the grass ever grow there again?

After a moment, I realized gray dust from my throat had blackened the sun. I had a long dream that night in which I dragged the sun down the forty-one steps of the village and soaked it in the water to wash it, but even when the whole river turned black, I still couldn’t clean the sun back to its original color.

We entered her life at different stages and all led her to the summit of hope, then left her in our own unique ways, letting her fall into the valley of despair to face life’s storms and clean up the aftermath on her own.

Fate is full of mockery.

She couldn’t have known that she’d run headlong into the very thing she’d been trying to escape.

I could tell that a layer of armor had hardened over the woman’s skin. She’d become a steel plate, with no holes or cracks.

Each of us has guilt on our hands. Each of us reached into your heart and stole something from you.

You make things difficult for me. I don’t know if I can say I’d rather I had never known you than to have gone through the war or if I should instead say that I’d happily endure the war just for the sake of knowing you.

Having you meant I had the world. So, if I can face myself with complete honesty (which presumably only a spirit can do), I would rather have known you, even if it means the earth crumbles and the map is torn to pieces by war.

I know that you are saying, “Wind. Wind.” It’s the sound of our ghosts passing by your window. Your grandson can’t hear it, but you can. Your eyes turn to the window, and they suddenly change. You see us.