My Dearest —,

It’s the season of Osmanthus again. The season of coldness, the season of us. It’s only been a few months since I’ve arrived here, the so-called land of the free. Yet it feels like a lifetime. I’ve gotten too lost trying to find my way to mull over our old days. Only now, when the first sign of winter has emerged have I felt more acutely the absence of the past. There are no Osmanthus bushes where I am now. All that’s here are bare branches and chilly winds. Oh, and snow. So much snow it turns the whole world silver. You would hate it here: it’s bone-chillingly cold, nothing like the mild weather back home. This is a place that doesn’t need the little white blossoms of Osmanthus to tell you it’s winter. I’m still trying to get used to not being completely shrouded in their scents. I guess this is just another price I paid for a better life.

I am so immensely sentimental this winter. Thinking about Osmanthus reminds me of our old school, of the long stretches of blossoms along that quiet, secret path. It was so perfectly convenient, a wall away from the boys dormitory that any walk towards that direction suggests scandal of a different kind. It’s one less appalling, something that can be joked and gossiped about and not frowned upon. I’m still amused by how you so easily turned that to our advantage, how you giggled whenever people make their assumptions about some non-existent boys that we visit every day. I didn’t mind the excuse as long as we could sit under the Osmanthus bushes in temporary serenity, the noises from the boy rooms only a distant echo. It’s the kind of place only suited for outcasts, those too deep in their own miseries to fear the disappearance of sound. 

I often think of that place, of the hours we spent drifting in a world of our own. I remember us sneaking out of classes at noon, choosing the silent campus in the midday sun to a stuffy cramped classroom. We would walk all the way across the instruction buildings, cafeterias, and dormitories, to the Osmanthus lane secluded by walls and trees. Sitting cross-legged on the ground, you never cared about the dirt and insects that might stain your pants. Instead you reveled in the grubbiness of it all, picking dried leaves off the ground and crunching them to dust as we talked, your eyes never leaving mine. Sometimes I can still see us, you laughing about silly little things and I gathering the fallen blossoms and tossing them up towards the sky. Watching them fall was like seeing snow fall, only it was sweeter and more delightful than any snow here could ever be.

Those days with you were…surreal. Down beneath the Osmanthus bush there was no confusion, no doubt, no excuse to tell the world. I adore the way you looked at me, and how naturally you played with my hand or lay your head on my shoulder. It’s almost easy to silence the voices that threaten to break us down.

Almost.

Those days are only bubbles. Even in them I knew they would burst. Our world is a ruthless, spiteful man, one too harsh and too cruel to let little girls keep their love. 

“Let it stay a fantasy,” He says as he rips it from our arms, voice dripping with malice, “It’s not real anyways.”

I didn’t wait for that moment to come. I couldn’t. It would break me, break us. So I ran and shattered our bubble myself. I fled as the last petal of Osmanthus blossom melted into soil and that winding, lonely path again filled with people. I put behind the comfort of the Osmanthus winters and fled for a place that doesn’t need them, a place where our bubble can be a reality.

I knew I was leaving you behind as well.

I’m sorry.

I do not attempt to ask for your forgiveness. I just thought you deserve an apology, an explanation.

You see, I was scared. I knew you also cared a little too much, and that made my leaving felt like a betrayal. I wasn’t running away from you, just that world, and the prospect of getting hurt. It’s the move of a selfish coward: everyone goes through the same but why do I get to be the one to whine and run away? Worse is that I was leaving you to bear all the judgements and contempt of that venomous place. I deluded myself, thinking you would be fine, you know better than to take anything to heart. But that doesn’t mean you deserve to do it all alone. I should’ve stayed and carried the baggage with you, yet that would only mean endless agony. I have already felt that phantom, will-be pain even when we were sitting under that Osmanthus bush. And I couldn’t stand it.

I wasn’t blind to your sorrow. I knew you wanted me to stay. It was a tough spot to be in, I understand. Instead of talking you hid your troubled thoughts in songs. You used to love singing this song called 董小姐 / Miss Dong to me, and whenever you replace “Dong” with my last name it filled me with dread. That midsummer day before I left, when we were strolling in the residual heat of the golden hour, down an empty track field with sunlight streaming through your hair you hummed, almost deep in thought:  “爱上一匹野马，可我的家里没有草原 / Fell in love with a wild horse, but my home is no grassland.” You didn’t realize how close I was to tears.

It’s not your fault I needed to leave, not your fault I was incapable of withstanding the hostility around. You simply wanted to give me too much, and when you couldn’t, you took all the blame for my betrayal. But did you know? It didn’t matter that you can’t shield me from the world. We were just powerless against a system long in place, and that was our downfall. Just like countless others before us, we could’ve never beaten the world.

You know, the ending of 董小姐 / Miss Dong always hits harder for me: “带我走吧，董小姐 / Take me away with you, Miss Dong…” How I hoped and feared that you had sung this to me on that day instead, that you had looked straight into my eyes and asked to leave with me. But you didn’t, and I am grateful. I would’ve had nothing to tell you except that I was hands-tied and helpless. I desperately wanted to run away with you, yet I could only save myself.

Do you hate me? Please do. I don’t deserve you. Because, as much as I fantasize about the past, I would still make the same decision if I could do it again. I was just sick of being home and hearing, over and over, “when you find a boyfriend, when you get married, when you have a kid…,” but really, “When you get one of those so-called 幸福的港湾/bay of happinese you will find your worth because come on, why would you want to be anything other than a toy for pleasure and birth machine and free nanny?”

No one taunts me like that anymore.

But still.

Leaving you was maddeningly painful, like severing my own limbs, bringing a knife down and seeing blood soak through my sleeves. I thought I had torn out all my yearnings for you and buried them under the Osmanthus bushes, but it still kills me now to remember the way your eyes watered as I told you of my departure. I had to tell myself that it was the darkest moment before dawn—that the sun awaited on the other side. It was almost true. People here have a way of emboldening you, making you just a bit more certain of who you are, a bit less concerned of who you should be. Yet, even in the land of the free I am still tied to those days with you, and the burdens left in the past. They haunt my dreams, marking me as an outcast though I know this life is better than what I’ve left. 

I still miss Osmanthus, miss their elegance and aroma and all the memories they carry. I miss them more as I know that I might not see them again. I will forever love them despite them being a trinket from the past, a shelter I no longer need. Osmanthus will always be with me, a tiny white blossom blooming at the bottom of my heart. It will never stop reminding me of home, of you.

Love you endlessly, 

Forever yours,

Yours truly,

—

Edited by Riley Schnittger

Artist Statement: I thought of a metaphor that queer love in a conservative patriarchy is like the flower osmanthus, and wrote the story around this metaphor. Osmanthus is a kind of flower that blooms in Winter and only for a very short period of time. It emits a very sweet and strong aroma. When queer love happens in environments that are oppressive and urges it to wither, they bloom strong and brave; yet sadly, many couldn’t beat the stress and oppression of such environments and end very quickly.