Tame Water

Kris Yang

You walk into water.

In two months, the ducklings will turn gray and brown, the willows will drop their branches, and people will crowd this shore with cigarette butts and alcohol bottles. You desire spring. But you don’t really know about spring. All you have is the cliché of greenness, and the cycle of life and death. The final act will be about this alteration. My body would be nailed on your stage, and you would come out of water, pause in front of me before you leave. The curtain would close. The past is dead and you move on with a new self. That’s how you want us to end – an ode made of my death to your rebirth. We should all enjoy a nice spring day, so I will make your wish come true. I sit down on a rock and stick myself into a steel rod. Its pointy end is warm and moist by my blood. In exchange I wish for a little gift. You have stopped swimming and the water is at your waist. You are waiting for your name, my last line. I open my mouth, but nothing comes out. You are giving yourself a standing ovation. I used to believe that my breath for your name would never run out, as if you were part of me. But you, with your confiding glance, soothing voice and soft fingers on my back – you are only the bait that lures me to the final trap. I take another big gulp of air, out comes the ashes of your name. You know how memory works? My memory thinks your name is trash, and dumps it out. In your script, my pitiful mind would be begging you to shed a tear for my wound and hold me in your frosty hands. At the first word and world produced by your heavenly voice, my pain would be replaced by joy. “You fucking slave,” that’s what you would be thinking while I lick my blood off your fingers. And the curtain would close. It’s not easy to tame water, because one can never be the owner of water. It’s wild, free, and never learns to obey. The key is to think of it as a mutual exchange: give what water wants and hope it returns the favor. You must make water dependent on you. You don’t know that water is washing off the color of your face. You don’t know that water is scraping the flesh off your bone. You don’t know that water can be tamed.