LaoChaofengjin
the year 2013
She asked me to go roller skating. I said I couldn’t, she said she’d teach me.
The first time I skated, I just held her hand. I don’t know why, but I did. She didn’t pull away. She led me around the rink, lap after lap.
After that night, we still went to work together like before. I always thought in my heart, she’s from Guangxi, she’ll go back sooner or later. I never told anyone this thought, and I never asked her about it.
Later she quit and left. When exactly she left, I can’t quite remember. Summer or autumn, I can’t recall. She didn’t make a point of telling me before she left, and I didn’t make a point of asking. Maybe I didn’t really want to know — because I’d already decided in my heart that she would leave.
Thirteen years have passed. Sometimes I think of that hand. Warm. My palm slightly sweating.
I never even asked her back then.
Thirteen years later, on July 18, 2026
Every reply of mine is short,
catching what she throws, but never chasing after.
I am careful.
I am making sure she still wants to talk to me,
making sure I am not intruding,
making sure she is doing well.
She bears no grudge,
takes no offense,
yet I never once choke her at the throat with my words.
The essays I write here,
the drafts I revise over and over,
the thirteen years of hesitation—
all of it I set down, gently, in those few light replies.
She showed me her days,
I looked, understood a little—
and she was gone.
She chatted with me, happy and at ease,
then went back to being that mother of two, that housewife who steps out for a workout now and then.
And I let out a breath,
and felt a little empty.
