At twenty-one, adrift and with nowhere to go, I rented a place with Sister Su, who was nine years older than me and raising her daughter alone.
A bowl of hot porridge, a lamp glowing through the night, and a few heart-stopping moments when we almost embraced.
Then she left without a word. I searched for her but found no trace, and wandered for years, while several relationships came to nothing.
I searched for him through the crowd a thousand times, only to turn around and find him there. When we met again, I learned that, driven by desperation, she had remarried and suffered domestic abuse. She fought desperately to divorce him, fled to another place with her daughter, and struggled to build a business on her own.
Half a lifetime lost, half a lifetime of hardship. What can I do to save you, Sister Su?
Loving is so hard, so hard, and writing is even harder