The night wind is no longer cold. After the beginning of spring, the air has started to soften, and in that softness nothing inside me stays sealed. Memory opens. So do emotions. In the city at night, both seem to bloom at once, and I keep arriving at the same realization: reunion and farewell are, in many ways, made of the same material.
My parting with home was never peaceful. It was sharp, hostile, unresolved, and even now reconciliation exists only on one side—if it exists at all. Maybe it never will. A city does not pause its transformation just because one person leaves. What is gone makes room for what comes next.
The barbecue stall I knew will not return. Jubao Lane will not return. The rooftop that used to stay open will not return. The Chunmeng Bookstore, where an entire day could disappear without notice, will not return. The lively night market on the pedestrian street will not return. The basketball court that turned into a lake whenever it rained will not return. The fireworks by the old city hall during New Year will not return. The Liuxi River, once clear and sweet, will not return. And neither will you all, roughhousing in Xinxin Internet cafe.
Time is cunning. It never flaunts its power, even when nothing can rival it. Instead, it chooses silence. Restraint. It advances without spectacle, and by the time it finally strikes, you are already too late to lift a hand against it.
It has struck my parents.
My mother’s hair has begun to turn white. She repeats herself more often now, grows impatient more quickly, talks in circles, worries aloud. Her arms seem more fragile than before. Her eyes have lost some of their clarity. Retirement has become a refrain in her mouth, spoken with the gravity of an approaching end of the world. And when she looks at me, I sometimes feel an urge to cry so suddenly that I can hardly bear it. I have wanted to cry countless times. I was not prepared for any of this—for the repetition, for the nagging, for the talk of retirement, for the white in her hair spreading little by little, for the fact of her aging. When I was full of confidence and eager to leave, I never imagined that one day I would meet her again in the form of her old age.
Before speaking to you again, I could not possibly have understood what time had done to you either. The endless headaches. The blocked blood vessels. Longing, time, fate—everything seemed to be feeding on your life. So I surrendered. The eight-year-old me surrendered, the eighteen-year-old me surrendered, and so did the person I am now. But to what, exactly?
I have never known how to prepare for a farewell. Must the sunlight be right? Must the sea breeze be gentle? Must old buildings reappear as they once were? Must flowers stand at the proper angle? Must the people I lost step back to my side? Must birds be singing and insects moving through the grass?
Is it only in a wind like this that I can raise my hand with strength, with steadiness,
to wave goodbye?
Or to sob?