BY SIENNA LIU
Three months ago, you asked me what’s fun in Chicago. I said, the Art Institute? You didn’t reply.
Five years ago you told me that your landlord had a few Kafka, that he left all his Calvino Borges Bulgakov Dostoyevsky Kafka behind and went to law school, that he subleased his apartment and moved into a place down the street with his girlfriend, and that he was a happy person free from some torture. I was lying on the chilled grass, smoking, when I got your long message.
Two months ago you mentioned you watched Mauvais Sang with some girl, and she found it obscure. Mauvais Sang, OBSCURE?! I was screaming inside. Yes, you said. Yes, it happens, you said. Not everyone is you, you said.
Four years ago you told me a story idea. You were stranded in the middle of some ocean with someone else you said. You didn’t know that person well but one thing you knew for certain was that you were in good supply of time in that boat. The idea was that you were stranded in a place where time was unlimited. Together you fought your shadow battles with imaginary figures. You and your companion recorded things you wanted to say but didn’t because you shared a sense of guilt about your past and future, something that had to do with why you boarded this boat in the first place. Days and years passed like that, or they didn’t, because you didn’t have a real sense of days and years. When you shared your last story together, something about a better future, or a different version of today, you saw a piece of land on the horizon while your companion shot himself up with all the remaining morphine. His pupils dilated. You were both happy in the end.
One month ago while we were talking about Pessoa you told me you were seeing someone. Is this the girl you watched Mauvais Sang with? I asked. Yes, you said, and it feels good, this feels like real life. What is going on can only take the expression of living. Oh, I said, that’s really good. I don’t know what to say. You said, say I’m happy for you.
Three years ago you told me that you wanted to become a functional human-being, instead of a fictional one. Your fingers were tracing the shape of my brows, eyelashes, nose bridge, lips, very, very slowly. I didn’t know it would be the last time I was seen by you. Hey does this feel real now I asked you. You looked at something else. I wished you would have said yes, you would have told me that yes this feels like real life.
Three weeks ago, while drunk and shooting darts in a London pub with some colleagues, I replied to you, I am. Happy for you. You know that. You said, thanks I do know that.
Two years ago you told me that if there ever were a so-called greatest poet, he should have only written one line, which is, I love you. Yes I said, you told me that already. Did I? Did I already tell you. Of course, you told me three years ago. I remember everything. A few minutes later you texted, ah, how did I ever let you run away.
Two weeks ago I chanced upon your girlfriend’s Twitter handle. She posts impossible things about you. Sweet, nice things you would say or do. But since she posted them they must have happened. She lives in Chicago.
One year ago you said it would be nice if one of us was always broke at any given point (or did you say broken?). It would be more fun. That way we could take turns being patient (or did you say the patient?).
One week ago I told you, perhaps we should stop talking to each other for a while. You replied after several hours, why was that?
Six months ago, you asked me what’s fun in Chicago. I said, deep dish pizza. You said, deep fried love and deep frozen freedom. Then you said you knew deep freeze pizza is a thing because your Belgian friend kept talking about it. I googled and told you, I don’t think it’s a thing.
Today I start to think maybe when you say “not everyone is you” you don’t mean it like “not everyone is you, too bad,” but “not everyone is you, whew.”
Today is April Fool’s day and it’s snowing outside. I’m facing my office window, thinking, today I’m leaving all my Calvino Borges Bulgakov Dostoyevsky Kafka behind. Today I don’t have a real sense of days and years. Today it feels like real life to you, and I am free from some torture. Today we are both happy. Today is in the end. A colleague walks by and asks me, hey are you okay? Yes I say, I’m just being moody. He laughs, thinking it’s some joke.
Sienna Liu grew up in Shanghai. The manuscript of her novel “Plagiarized Loves” was shortlisted for the 2020 Dzanc Prize for Fiction and longlisted for the 2020 Petrichor Prize (Regal House Publishing). Her poetry chapbook "Square" is forthcoming in September 2022 (Black Sunflowers Poetry Press). She currently lives and writes in London.