When I opened my eyes to the light breeze, an open book was sitting on my lap. I was holding a page as if it were a feather, waiting for the next scene. For a moment, I was confused. Where was I? I could hear water. At first it was faint, a murmur at the end of a deep cave, but it grew louder until I heard the churning and splitting of waves surrounding me. I felt the rise and fall of my body, like the moment of suspension before a roller coaster drops. I recalled that I was on a boat, on my way to an island for a summer holiday. Had I fallen asleep? That didn’t make sense—it hadn’t been long enough. I shook my head. I must have been lost in thought. But about what?
Long wooden benches stretched along the ship’s sleek prow. I was sitting on one of them, reading a book, looking at the spot where the turquoise horizon met the gigantic cumulus clouds. I was waiting for the island to appear, first as a dot, before slowly growing larger as it loomed closer. Beside me, a burly old man had been dozing off for some time. Under the summer sun, his white shirt and the folds of his thick skin made him look like melting vanilla ice cream. There was also a couple walking along the deck. Though they looked young enough to be students still, they seemed very comfortable with each other, their similar mannerisms and expressions suggesting that they were already married. The guy pulled the girl in by her waist as they approached the open railing. They leaned right up against it, the toes of their sneakers poking out into the void over the rough waves crashing below. Watching them laugh without an ounce of fear, I was suddenly reminded of my parents.
My parents’ marriage had been tacitly arranged by their grandfathers who were close friends. Neither my mother nor my father had ever dated anyone else. Yet when my father proposed to my mother, he burst into tears like a child, overwhelmed with anxiety and fear that such an important moment in his life was passing by. He was flooded with emotion, nervous about the possibility of rejection. My mother simply watched him cry, a smile on her face. In that moment, he knew that as long as this calm, level-headed woman was by his side, there was nothing he couldn’t do. When I first fell in love, my parents told me this story, their eyes shining with happiness and nostalgia. “Listen, nothing can be as perfect as this.”
Not long after, my mother’s office building went up in flames. The cause was arson, which led to a gas explosion and ended with the entire building collapsing. My father and I found out from the news, but for some reason, we were both certain that she was safe. The next day, when the first responders found my mother’s body in the rubble, it all felt like an elaborate prank. My father lived the rest of his life as if it had indeed been a joke—as if, at any moment, my mother would walk through the door. I always thought the reason my father never succumbed to grief until the day he died, the reason he could raise me and remain in my life, was due to this small act of self-deception.
As for me, I find comfort in remembering this one time my mother got angry at me. I was around three or four, sitting in my high chair, while she anxiously paced the messy kitchen, shouting, “I can’t lose myself to raise you. I’m not going to let you put a stop to everything.” I’m sure she didn’t even remember that day, and I didn’t attach much significance to it while she was alive. I knew that she wasn’t truly angry but afraid, and that she ultimately overcame that fear to live the life she wanted. And I knew that, despite everything, she loved me. Even if there was some convoluted, cosmic link between that day and the day her office building burned down, I knew it wasn’t some kind of punishment or price to pay. And because I knew these things, the memory of my young mother’s bitter yelling remains as proof of her fierce love.
The young couple had disappeared from the deck. Come to think of it, I’d never seen my parents at that age. Had they been my parents’ ghosts come to visit me? That would make them almost a hundred years old. It dawned on me that I was now very old myself.
◆
“Are you seasick?”
The man who had been dozing next to me had woken up. He glanced at the book on my lap and my face.
“No. I was just daydreaming.”
“If you’re not feeling well, just say so. I know all kinds of ways to treat seasickness.”
“You must spend a lot of time on the water.”
“I’m the cook on this ship. You probably ate the breakfast I made this morning.”
“Yes, it was delicious.”
“But now after making just one meal, I’m wiped. I guess I’ve gotten old. Whenever I start to feel my age, I squeeze out the last bit of energy I have to come up to the deck, soak up the sun like a sunflower, and sleep. It really helps.”
“You still look very healthy to me.”
He glanced at me; his face bronzed by the sunlight.
“I think I know you from somewhere.”
“Really?”
I pretended not to know what he meant.
“We were supposed to meet at the train station, but we never did. Don’t you remember?”
“Hmm . . . I think I’ve forgotten many things by now.”
He nodded, looking a bit disappointed.
“You’re getting off at the island, right? Before you go, I’d like to make you something.”
I followed him into the ship’s only kitchen. Jars of spices and colorful pickled fruits were secured to the counter with strings so they wouldn’t topple over from the wind and the rocking of the waves. With the tip of his knife, he quickly cut up some tomatoes, onions, and cabbage, then fried some garlic in sizzling oil. He spread strawberry jam and cream cheese on a thick slice of wheat bread and made a tasty-looking sandwich. He took the first bite. I ate two in a row, which made him happy.
“I traveled the world a long time ago. I got tired of working and sleeping in different places all the time, but somehow, I ended up settling on a boat, drifting from place to place. Funny, isn’t it?”
“It suits you. It’s hard to picture you living any other kind of life.”
“But there was a time when I wanted to live somewhere completely different. If a certain woman had come with me, I could’ve done it.”
I said nothing, so he continued.
“I was a foreigner, same as I’d always been, and she was a restless traveler caught up in temporary wanderlust. We met in a city and had a wonderful time together, but at the end of that day we each had our own trains to catch. I asked her to come with me. We promised to meet at the train station at a certain time, but she didn’t show. I never saw her again.”
His tone shifted slightly, turning playful.
“Can I tell you something funny? I didn’t take that train. I changed my ticket to the next one, and then the next. Just in case she hadn’t gone home but had a last-minute change of heart and still showed up. It was a tiny station out in the countryside, with only two places to eat—a sandwich shop and a donut shop. I don’t like donuts, so I ended up eating five sandwiches. They weren’t bad. I had a ham and cheese, a bacon and tomato, an egg salad, a crab and cucumber, and a potato salad sandwich. I remember them all. But in my bag, I had sandwiches I’d made to share with her on the train. The same sandwiches we’re eating now.”
When our ship arrived at the harbor, he accompanied me down to the dock to see me off. As we walked down the stairs, he confessed that over the past few decades, he’d spent only one month on land in total. He said that standing on unmoving ground made him sick.
“Let me tell you something funny, too,” I said. “I went to the train station that day. From the donut shop on the other side of the tracks, I watched as you let the trains pass, and as you went into the sandwich shop to eat all those sandwiches. If you had come into the donut shop just once, I would’ve worked up the courage to spend my life with you. I have a big sweet tooth, you see.”
The port was crowded with travelers just beginning their trips. I walked a bit into the crowd of happy faces before turning back to the cook. He staggered toward me like a drunkard before running back to the edge of the dock to throw up the sandwiches we’d just eaten.
◆
In the street corners leading into the island, sellers wove their way around the travelers, hawking their wares. Many of them were swindlers trying to sell stories or fortunes. They approached the travelers as if they didn’t have a single care in the world and mesmerized them with grandiose words. Though the whole exchange seemed a bit shady, the family with two daughters in front of me stopped, curious. They handed a coin to a short, old woman, seeming to consider it a welcome ceremony to the island. As I walked by, I overheard her telling them they’d just purchased the secret of the universe.
Walking deeper inland, I came across a circular plaza full of restaurants and shops. Narrow alleys between the stores connected to other streets, and in the center was a spacious lawn where shirtless men and women in bikinis tanned on towels. On the grassless paths, people, bikes, and horses with colorful saddles passed freely. The island was big and full of people, not the tiny getaway spot with jagged cliffs and an empty, sandy beach I had been expecting. Before I knew it, I’d been sucked into the bustling atmosphere.
At a small clothing store, I bought a dark green dress made from a thin, light fabric. Changing into it made me realize I was now in a different world. The sky was clear and everything on the streets sparkled in the sunlight. People walked around eating fruit to fend off the heat. Suddenly struck with thirst, I went into the first juice shop I saw. I picked out a fruit I’d never seen before with a name I couldn’t quite pronounce. It was purple and oval-shaped, with black spots around the stalk. I asked the slim woman behind the counter to turn it into juice.
“Do you like it?” the woman asked after I took the first sip.
“It’s delicious.”
“This fruit didn’t always grow on this island. A foreigner left it here. Foreigners always leave something behind, even though they never come back.”
She went on in her melodic voice.
“Apparently, where it comes from, it wasn’t even used as animal feed because it was too sour, bitter, and stringy. It was mostly used for dyes. But here, the island’s salty air and limestone soil turned it sweet, fragrant, and beautiful. It was born again.”
“I’ve never tasted anything like this before.”
“It’s really unique. But no one remembers where it came from. The people who once knew are long gone now.”
“Can I have another, please?”
“Of course. Have as many as you want. There’s plenty.”
The streets overflowed with musicians, magicians, and painters. If they succeeded in catching the attention of passersby, they would persuade them to go for a beer. They danced and waged bets, as if they were on the island purely to make friends. Disappearing into some back alleys for a swim, they’d return with wet hair. Everyone seemed to know that seawater pooled here and there on the side streets, creating natural swimming holes. I dipped my hand into the clear water, swirling it around before tasting my finger. It was salty. I couldn’t figure out how saltwater stayed in these pools without drying up, given how far they were from the ocean.
It suddenly occurred to me that the air on the island didn’t smell salty at all. If not for the view of the ocean from the dock, it would have been hard to believe that this was indeed an island. Where was the beach? The deeper I wandered, the more the island seemed to expand into an intricate, golden maze. But since I didn’t know where anything was or where I was going, I wasn’t worried about getting lost. That’s what I was telling myself when someone called out to me.
“Halmeoni, halmeoni.”
“Are you talking to me?”
“Yes, please help us.”
A group of young boys was making a bet, something that seemed to happen anytime three or more people gathered here.
“Please pick which of us you think is the most special.”
“Okay.”
The first child could draw a perfect circle. He placed his finger on the thin layer of sand on the ground and slowly traced the shape, his eyes closed. His finger started from one point and returned precisely to where it began. The circle was perfectly round, not crooked at all.
“I can draw any point at an equal distance from the center,” he said. But he wasn’t able to find the center of the circle.
The second boy had three moles that roamed around his body. According to him, the moles moved randomly across his skin, showing up on the nape of his neck where he couldn’t see them, on the tip of his tongue, or on the palm of his clenched fist. He believed that the center of gravity of the triangle formed by these three spots was his vital point, and that if it was discovered, he’d die.
“Every time the spots move, my destiny changes,” he said. Unfortunately, all three of his moles were hidden at the moment, so no one was able to read his destiny.
The third boy was born in a village where, due to some genetic reason, most of the inhabitants were identical twins. His mother, father, and all his friends were twins. Every pregnant woman carried twins, which meant there was also a high miscarriage rate. If one twin died during childbirth, the surviving child was given a mud doll to take care of for the rest of their life, to fill the void left by their twin’s absence.
“But I was born without a twin. No one could understand my existence as an only child.”
I placed my hand on top of the third boy’s round head.
◆
I walked and walked, but the road showed no signs of ending. Out of breath, I leaned against a stone that jutted obliquely into the sky. What I had thought was a signpost turned out to be a gravestone etched with birth and death dates. It seemed that on this island, people didn’t bury their loved ones in cemeteries and instead placed gravestones where the deceased had lived. Perhaps these stones served as amulets or totem poles. Aside from these grave markers, there were only restaurants as far as the eye could see. I wondered where the customers who filled these restaurants, as well as the owners who fed them in exchange for their money, lived. I hadn’t seen a single home yet.
Just then a man on horseback approached and offered me a ride.
“You’re trying to get to the beach, right?”
I was, but I shook my head. “I can’t ride horses.”
“Are you afraid of them?”
“Yes, I am.”
He kept trying to persuade me. “Then how about I do the riding? All you have to do is sit in front of me and tell me why you’re scared. You won’t need to ride the horse yourself. Just think of the horses in your memory and tell me about them. By the time you finish, you’ll be at the beautiful ocean, and you’ll have gotten there on a horse.”
I ended up giving my money to that confident horseman and telling him the story of how I came to fear horses.
“Unfortunately, the story isn’t long enough to last us all the way to the beach. A long time ago, my friend’s nine-year-old daughter was learning how to ride when she fell off. The horse kicked her in the head, and she almost died. That’s all.”
“And then?” he asked.
“And then what?”
“There must be a reason that incident mattered so much to you,” the horseman pointed out.
“Well.” I hesitated. “I had given my friend’s daughter a fedora as a gift. With purely good intentions, of course. The hat was small and cute, made from chestnut-colored wool and adorned with an apricot velvet ribbon. I thought this cute little girl would look so elegant wearing the fedora as she sat atop a horse. Later, I learned that people are supposed to wear metal safety helmets for riding lessons. But I didn’t know that at the time—I’d never ridden a horse before. I just bought the fedora after imagining her wearing it, thinking it looked vaguely like a riding helmet. The little girl loved it. The day of the accident, instead of wearing a proper helmet to protect her fragile skull, she wore the pretty hat I had given her.”
The horseman, who wore nothing at all on his head, skillfully prodded the horse with his legs.
“So then what happened?”
“She . . . underwent a major surgery. But she didn’t wake up. The doctor couldn’t guarantee she’d recover, and my friend called me every day, crying. She wasn’t thinking about the hat at all, but I was. I was in shock. I found myself wracked by mysterious fevers, unable to move my arms and legs in my sleep on account of the temporary paralysis that would set in. The thought kept haunting me—an innocent child might die because of me. Of course, I wasn’t in my right mind, but I couldn’t help seeing that tragedy as a punishment for all my wrongs. I wasn’t yet married then and was instead in an awful relationship with a married man. He was terrible, someone I shouldn’t have loved and who didn’t love me, but I despaired of ever being free of him. I loved him too much. Our relationship looked fine on the surface, but my heart was moth-eaten. Death had always approached slowly, and now, at long last, it had shown its face. I knew that if the girl died, I’d die too. I prayed that she would wake up safe and sound. That she would once again walk the path meant for her, toward a bright future. If that happened, I promised myself I’d cut ties with that man for good. Even though he and the dying girl had nothing to do with each other. Nine days later, she woke up as if from a nap, saying she was hungry. When I heard the news, my heart swelled with joy and awe toward life. It was the most profound moment I’d ever experienced. Already, that man was nowhere to be found in my heart.”
“What happened then?” the horseman asked.
His question surprised me. “How did you know there was more to the story?”
“Stories never end. They always lead somewhere else.”
I continued. “After that, I wanted to start over. I thought long and hard about who I was and who I could become. First, I decided I had to leave. It didn’t matter where to. I quit my job, packed up and went. I traveled to new places, saw new streets and sights. It was fun and freeing, but also unbearably lonely. I met many people, but no one who stayed. They all left, one by one. After traveling for a year, I came home, exhausted. And I realized a man I’d never particularly noticed before had been in love with me the whole time. Or maybe I had known it deep down all along. Now I could finally love him back. I called him, and he came to meet me. That man became my husband—the only man I love. It was sheer luck that I found him after emerging from what felt like a strange labyrinth. The thought that it might not have been him, that there are infinite paths out there, terrifies me. The world is truly an incomprehensible place. What I find hardest to understand is how people keep dying, while others keep being born. The cycle of life that’s gone on since the dawn of time. While I was preparing for my wedding, my friend’s husband—the father of the girl who fell off the horse—took his own life. I didn’t find out until months later. My friend didn’t attend the wedding, and I only learned the truth when we met up so she could give me a belated wedding gift.
“Apparently, he had been having an affair and was with his mistress the day of the accident. He came clean to his wife after their daughter woke up. Though it took her a long time, my friend eventually forgave him. She told me she had truly forgiven him, not just buried the resentment deep in her heart. But in the end, he took his own life. My friend believed that the nine days their daughter lay in a coma had somehow changed him in a way that led to his suicide. She asked if that made any sense. I told her it did.
“That day, before we parted, I went with her to pick up her daughter after school. The girl looked very healthy, and she bowed politely to me. She used to follow me everywhere, but in those two years, she had completely forgotten me. Kids grow up so fast. This girl had grown so much she was almost unrecognizable, and she didn’t ride horses anymore, but she still had the bewildered look of a child who had fallen from a great height. Her eyes, nose, mouth, all the muscles in her face — they performed their functions mechanically, but she seemed completely empty inside, as if everything had been wiped clean.”
Slowly, we came to a stop.
“All right, we’ve arrived at the beach.”
◆
There was a small hotel perched on a hill overlooking the shore. Unlike the plaza, which was full of tourists, the hotel and the beach below were deserted, as if I’d stepped into some alternate universe. The hotel was empty save for an elderly manager and a few lazy cats that prowled the premises. I checked into a room and sat at the desk by the window. I ate and drank the simple fare prepared for me, biscuits with jam and a warm cup of tea. I ate while looking out at the sunset through the yellow curtains. The part of the ocean visible from my window was full of strange, sharp rocks. When the waves passed through, foam got trapped between them, looking like splashes of milk. The color of the faraway ocean was red, and the sky beyond it was pink. Empty rooms, useless rooms, serving no one, I thought to myself as I rested.
Later, when I went down to the lobby for dinner, the elderly manager was still the only person there.
“Excuse me, where’s the restaurant?” I asked.
“Our hotel doesn’t have one.”
Taken back, I asked, “Where do guests eat?”
“If you follow the coastline a little ways, you’ll find a restaurant. The food there is very good. But you must hurry. The sun will set soon.”
As I walked along the beach, I understood what he meant. The beach had no lights and grew pitch black as soon as the sun set. There were no houses and no people. The only way to proceed was to follow the coast. As long as I remembered that the ocean was on my right and the beach was on my left, I wouldn’t get lost. The lines made by the waves on the shore constantly shifted, but the water gave off a bluish glow that illuminated my path. Just as the gravel beneath my feet changed to fine sand, I spotted a restaurant, yellow light pouring out of its windows into the darkness.
The restaurant was neither too big nor too small, with a wooden bar and about ten round tables. However, there didn’t seem to be any empty seats—the tables were full and people also lined the walls, talking to each other with drinks in hand. It was hard to believe that all of them had come from somewhere in the darkness outside.
“Will you be dining with us today?” the server asked. She was a beautiful woman with a slightly crooked lip.
I hid my awe and said, “Yes, but it seems there are no seats?”
“It’s no problem.”
She led me to a spot near a dark wall.
At a wooden table for four, a gentleman was just finishing his meal and getting up. She guided me there as if she had foreseen his departure. I ordered, and she smiled before disappearing into the kitchen.
“Don’t worry,” the elderly woman sitting across from me said kindly. “The food here is excellent.”
Her plate was half-empty, and she was also drinking some wine. Her skin was pale, and her chin was a bit long. My eyes were drawn to her small pearl earrings, the only piece of jewelry she wore. She was plump and attractive, and though her clothes and shoes were a bit too big on her, they had an elegant cut. She gave off an air of wealth, as well as loneliness. I didn’t understand how she could just resume her meal as if nothing was wrong and kept shooting her anxious looks. Was she pretending not to notice? She sliced her cooked vegetables into small pieces and ate them one by one. I peered at her face—it was identical to mine. The lights were dim, but not so dark that I couldn’t see. How could this be? The mother and child eating next to us paid us no attention.
When the beautiful server with the crooked lip brought me my food, I asked her, “Do you think the wine she’s having would go with my meal? I’d like to order a bottle.”
The server looked at my face before turning her gaze to the woman. She looked at the wine bottle, but also at her face. She slowly turned back to me.
“It would pair excellently with your food, but unfortunately we don’t have any left.”
She looked apologetic, but it didn’t seem like she’d noticed anything strange.
“Have some of mine,” the older woman readily offered. “Please bring us another glass,” she asked the server, who went straight to the kitchen.
“Are you sure that’s okay?” I asked, looking straight into her eyes, as if to test her. I wanted to check if this woman with the exact same eyes as mine was playing a prank on me.
“Of course. I wanted to share this delicious wine with someone else anyway.”
As I ate, the woman and I chatted. We were the same age and height, with the same birthplace as well. But she merely marveled at the coincidence, seeming genuinely oblivious. She poured more wine into my glass, asking me to tell her my story. I told her about the people I had loved. How we’d come together, and how we’d drifted apart.
“My husband and I saved up some money and bought a large house on the outskirts of the city,” I said. “We promised to raise our future kids, grow old, and spend our lives together there. He wanted to build me a swimming pool in the backyard. He dug up the dirt, flattened it out, installed the plumbing, and finally, carefully lined it with blue tiles so not a drop of water would leak out. He did that all by himself, working on it bit by bit after work. The pool was 4 meters wide and 12 meters long, and the water was 1.7 meters deep.”
“Wow, that’s incredible,” she said.
“It took almost half a year.”
“Still, that’s very impressive.”
“Yes. When that beautiful pool was completed, we were so happy and threw a party for our friends. We filled the pool with clean water and set out food and drinks on one end, then spent the day swimming and eating. My husband stayed in the pool the whole time. He swam underwater from one end to the other before suddenly shooting up for air, again and again. Our friends laughed as he splashed water all around, saying he looked like a seal. He lay in the pool with his hands on his chest, kicking his feet. With a silly expression on his face, he dove into the water and surfaced, over and over. We thought he was messing around because he was excited, so we laughed at him. My husband loved to make people laugh, so it wasn’t out of character. But actually, he was drowning. For some reason, his muscles contracted, and he wasn’t able to control them. After swallowing a lot of water and being unable to breathe, he was taken to the hospital. He was lucky enough to survive, but part of his brain was damaged from the temporary lack of oxygen, leaving one side of his face paralyzed. It looked like the expression he used to make when trying to make people laugh.”
◆
At that moment, a corner of the restaurant lit up and the beautiful woman with the crooked lip started to sing. Turns out she wasn’t a server, but a singer. The musicians began playing their instruments to accompany her. The old woman and I listened. A song I’d never heard before flowed from the singer’s crooked lips. Everyone in the restaurant watched.
“Isn’t she beautiful?” I asked the old woman, and she agreed. When the song ended, I resumed my story.
“Even after that incident, my husband and I lived happily in that house for thirty-six years, with the swimming pool. My husband would change the water, clean the floor and repair the tiles as needed. Our daughter and son both learned to swim there. We didn’t view it as a site of tragedy and rather chose to love it all the more. The swimming pool and my husband’s twisted face were signs of his love for me. It was proof that though we’d fallen into a deep hole of misfortune, we’d made it back out together. My husband passed before me. One morning I woke up to find he had died next to me, as peacefully as if he were still dreaming. I was briefly overcome with sadness before noticing that his face had returned to the way it was before. It was my first time in thirty-six years seeing my husband’s face the way it had been, after years of aging together. Only after he’d died. His face looked peaceful, the expression of an old person who knew everything was over now.”
The old woman became lost in thought. After a moment, she spoke.
“Your story has nothing to do with my life, but somehow I feel that it’s connected.”
“In what sense?” I asked.
“In the sense that life is always practice for death. The way dreams are practice for life.”
It was time for me to go back, so I said goodbye to the woman.
“I had a lovely time,” I said, meaning it. “By the way, don’t you think we look somewhat alike?” I asked cautiously, unable to help myself.
She shook her head with a look of surprise. “Not at all. All this time, I was thinking that you look like the beautiful singer.”
◆
Walking out of the restaurant, I was worried about taking the dark path back to the hotel. Would I be able to find my way? But my fears were unfounded. The night beach was bathed in light. People were walking on the sand in groups, holding torches, as if they were participating in a celebratory parade or a ceremonial dance. I found myself among the crowd, moving slowly, like a gentle wave. We didn’t know where we were going, or where we had come from. The torches illuminating the night passed from hand to hand. When a torch was passed to me, I was frightened by the hot flame coming too close to my face. But I didn’t let go, holding on until it was time to pass it on to someone else.
I came to realize that this was someone’s wedding. It was the custom here to get married on the beach, where the dark ocean met the night sky. The islanders threw white flowers into the black water, blessing the couple. And this wasn’t the only procession on the long, dark beach that night. Next to the wedding procession passed a funeral procession. People would make way for each other and pass by, or take up space and push each other, and at one point everyone was all mixed up in one big group. I wondered if it was possible to pass through this beach without hurting someone else. I became lost in distant thoughts.
Just then, someone reached out between the people to grab my hand.
“May your trip be peaceful.”
I recalled her face; she was the seller who’d told the family’s fortune near the dock. I rummaged through my pocket and handed her a coin. With a satisfied grin, she grabbed the coin with a finger as gnarled as a tree branch.
“Now I shall tell you the secret of the universe.”
She brought her ageless, wrinkled face close to my ear and whispered, “There’s an empty beach where someone is always arriving.”
She spoke in a singsong voice.
“Some people sit on the sand and stay a while before leaving. Some people slowly stroll through the beach. Some people wander along the edge of the water. Some people love the beach so much, they build a house and live there. Some people forget that they’ve been wandering around the beach, while others live their whole lives there, not even knowing they’ve arrived. Once in a while some people fall in love with the sunset and, rather than wandering, wish to become one with it.”
With that, she brought her hands together and bowed to me.
“Are you a poet?” I asked.
“I am but a person who sells trinkets for coins.”
“What else do you sell?”
The short woman briefly looked up into my eyes.
“I sell the truth to dreamers.”
“How much for a truth?”
I extended a coin to her, but she shook her head. She reached out her arms and enveloped me in a gentle embrace. I listened carefully to the words she whispered in my ear.
“We have all fallen into a strange cave.”
She let go of me and laughed sadly, gazing at my face. It was time for me to go, but I felt sad.
I knew that once I opened my eyes and saw the light pouring out from that other world, this dream would be over in an instant. I knew I’d return to being a seven-year-old girl who fell asleep on her parents’ lap one sunny afternoon while reading a book on the lawn. In the first few seconds after I blink my eyes open, I’ll be able to recall the precious moments from this life I’ve already lived, but soon I will forget everything and return to being a child who doesn’t yet know the secret or truth about the world. A child who is curious and scared about her future, but who will push through the feeling of déjà vu and live anyway. Before I can even see the light from that world, I can hear my parents’ voices. I listen to them as they look at their sleeping daughter, wondering what kind of secrets she’ll keep when she grows up, and whether or not she’ll remember the strange dream and interesting book from today, and in what mystical way she’ll reminisce on her childhood. I can feel the pure love of my parents as they wonder how my destiny will mysteriously show itself and come to occupy a corner of my life, how I’ll discover love while navigating the confusing maze of life, and how happy that’ll make me. But I prepare myself to live without knowing any of this and open my eyes as if waking from a long spell.
