The Last Rose of Shanghai

by Weina Dai Randel

Our past—my light, my tears—is gone, forever out of my reach. But I hope after today it will be different; after today, I’ll be at peace.

There is a kind of love that strikes like a thunderbolt; it blinds you, yet opens your eyes to see the world anew. Within its light, a pathway was illuminated.

I supposed a marriage to him was like the expensive bird’s nest soup, the opaque netlike thing that had the texture of jellyfish and was sweetened with hard rock sugar, a delicacy, overpriced, but I had accepted it because Mother had chosen it for me.

She was the magnet to his thunderbolt, the starburst to his gloominess, and the music to his silence, and unthinkable as it was, the converse was also true.

Memory is a forest; it turns with the seasons. It swells in summer, dries up in fall, dies in winter, and sprouts furiously again in spring.

“I’ve grown rather fond of you, Aiyi. I wish we had bonded years ago. You’re a friend I’d love to keep. But don’t cry. I came to Shanghai with a broken heart. I don’t want to leave with tears in my eyes.”

It dawned on me that in the river of life, people came and went like boats. Full of steam and noise, they docked, and all would be blown by a wind that you couldn’t predict.