Fivefold Devotion: Mr. Shi Has Split Personality

This is a long journey of love and healing. It isn’t that she heals him; they heal each other. It isn’t that their personalities are erased; every fragment that split off learns to bloom in the same soil. From broken glass scattered across the floor to notes covering the walls, from bloody fingerprints on their marriage certificate to five names lined up on a clothesline in the garden, they walk together through every night of dissociative identity disorder, until at last they stand in the morning sunshine. In the dawn light, he lowers his head and kisses her forehead. It isn’t a restrained touch that’s over in an instant, or a timid kiss that hovers above her skin, afraid to land. It’s a complete, certain kiss, unafraid of rejection. He says, “I love you. I’ve loved you since our sophomore year.” She has waited a long time to hear those words, from the corner of the cafeteria to the therapist’s chair, from the first cup of ginger tea to the final line on the handover checklist. Now she rests her head against his heartbeat, seventy-two beats a minute, every one saying: I’m here, I’m here, I’m here.