I remember a dream, so illusory yet so radiant, where a woman’s happiness was as simple as it could be. In her half-lived life, she had known love and also hatred. Perhaps she wasn’t as perfect as you might imagine. Perhaps it’s just that people are accustomed to romanticizing love as peach blossoms flowing with the stream, or as branches intertwined and graves shared.

He came, but now she must leave.