[Wenye] Letters, Sea Breeze and Tomorrow's Cherry Blossoms

The night is already deep. He sat in front of the window, and an orange lamp illuminated the manuscript paper, which was covered with dense words. Some days, he would stop and listen to the wind outside the window. There is no wind tonight, only a very light rain, hitting the glass thinly, like someone tapping with their fingertips. He was not in a hurry, folded up the scrapped pages and put them under an old book. He thought of the cherry tree in the garden. When I passed by a few days ago, the buds on the branches were still tightly wrapped, and the brown sepals were like a child's clenched fist. But spring is here after all, and it can't be stopped. He knew that in a few days, those fists would be loosened, and layers of light pink would bloom, so thin and translucent, as if they were cut from the morning glow. Then what? —— Then the wind will come, the rain will come, and the petals will fall one by one. Neighbor children would run under the trees, causing a flurry of snow. Then, the branches become empty. He knows it all. But the tree still blooms every year. Even though it knew that it would only last a few days, and that it would end up scattered all over the place, it still spent all the energy it had saved for a whole year on this one bloom. He looked down at his manuscript paper. I wrote, tore, and wrote, and those sentences sometimes came and sometimes didn't come. He has been writing this for three years. Maybe it will take another three years to write, maybe even longer. Maybe he'll never get to where he wants to be. But what does it matter. He picked up the pen again. The shadow under the lamp fell on the wall, swaying slightly, like a quiet tree. Sakura is for tomorrow. Today, he just needs to dig his roots deeper, extend his branches farther, and wait for his own gust of wind to come. The sound of rain gradually stopped. The words on the manuscript paper wake up one after another, like flower buds opening their fists. Intention: It will bloom like this every year. After blooming, it will fall. After it has fallen, it will bloom again next year.