A Single Swallow

by Zhang Ling

What is seventy years? For a worker bee producing honey, it’s more than 560 lifetimes. For a buffalo plowing a field, it’s perhaps three—if it is not slaughtered prematurely. For a person, it’s almost an entire life. In a history book, it’s probably just a few paragraphs. But in God’s plan, it’s an instant, the blink of an eye.

The living can’t control their own days, but the dead are not thus bound. After death, the soul is no longer limited by time, space, or unexpected events. The soul’s world has no boundaries. To the soul, the entire universe and all eternity are just a thought away.

But in every danger, God provided a narrow path by which I might escape.

Time is a strange thing. It washes away the outer skin of solemnity and reveals the absurd nature of things.

“Is this silly little thing worth crying over? You’ll have plenty of things worth crying over in the future,” the older sister said.

Hate that can find expression is not hate. Hate must come to the end of its own rope before being forgotten.

War is one world, and peace another. Each world has its own door, and they are not connected in any way.

“Everything that happens in this world happens for reasons suited to its particular time,” she said at last.