I Wrote This For You

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Anne Chen

I Wrote This For You There’s an old Chinese saying, that a man should never give his significant other any of two kinds of gifts: a handkerchief, or a pair of shoes. For both would curse the couple to an inevitable doom – the latter symbolizing the man walking out of the woman’s life, and the former that he would make her cry.

Perhaps if I’d known this, I wouldn’t have so happily accepted that pink handkerchief, ingrained with my name, Daniel gave me that summer after he’d returned from Japan.

A four-year long romance is a triumph for any young couple – naïve and inexperienced in the whimsical ways of love – in high school, but we did it. We did it with many fights, breakups, and tears – all mine – along the way. But with one more year tucked under his belt than me, Dan was beckoned to college while I was still cramming for the SATs. And with that, our mighty feat of conquering the “Oh, they won’t last”s and “It’s just high school puppy love”s abruptly ended – the distance, the growing lapses of time between contact – physical and over the phone – strained the relationship, until it was squeezed completely dry.

There is no greater loss than that of another human being. By death or by life itself – life pulling us all in different directions, often farther and farther away from those we want forever.

Those who have made such a mark that we wear them proudly like old scar tissue, like prized battle wounds – proof that we survived the gunfire and rain of shrapnel. Now, mere shadowy silhouettes in our memories. Until time picks away at and erodes these dear memories completely, and we’ve lost them – and a bit of ourselves.

I miss him. I miss knowing his little this and that’s, his bodily quarks. The way that tuft of hair would always stubbornly stick up and refuse to stay down. The way his hands would always have to be fidgeting with something. The way his voice would make me suddenly sit up a little straighter, talk a bit louder – make me suddenly so awake and aware and alive. Or the color of his bed sheets – a horrible, ugly, murdered teal. The jagged crack in his bedroom window, where a poor little bird had crashed and tumbled. The lonely poplar that grew from his front lawn – I loved the way the sun’s rays would stream between its thin branches and illuminate our figures as he taught me how to throw a decent spiral.

But these recollections, once so vivid and real, they dwindle in clarity a little, bit by bit, day by day. I often try to play them back in my head, like some old, silent film reel, lest I lose them completely. We haven’t spoken in nearly five years. And they’re all I have left of him.

And if I do think of him – though, after a trillion ticks of the minute hand and the molting of several calendars, this occurs less frequently – I wonder: “Who is he now? What is he doing? Is he still that same, avid Ohio State fan? Is he seeing someone? Does he think of me?”

Without a doubt, he’s changed. As I’ve I. Would I recognize him, would he me, if we ran into each other serendipitously someday on the street? I saw him once, just once, a few years ago, after the break up – he said “Hey” – that’s all – and in that instance, I forgave him. I forgot all those nights, curled up in a ball under my sheets, eyes bloodshot, tearstained, the only thought

racing through my head in a fevered chant: “Forget him, forget him.” Three seconds, one word, and we parted ways.

“When you are bitten by a dog, you become afraid of all dogs. But you can’t live the rest of your life like that,” my mother said. Another Chinese proverb, another lesson to be learned – but I know if I saw him again, hear his voice one more time, some part of me will still respond – the odd twinge in the heart strings, some small butterflies in the stomach – like I always did when I saw him walking towards my locker in high school.