Chapter Text
Weeks passed by in a kind of love-drunk rhythm neither of them had ever known before , a rhythm that felt absurdly domestic, impossibly gentle, and almost suspiciously peaceful for two women who once thrived on chaos, law, and heartbreak.
By now they had a schedule.
A ridiculous, perfect, soft schedule.
Orm went to the office every morning , hair up in a messy bun that somehow looked editorial, carrying iced coffee and trauma from law school, heels clicking with purpose. The young, gorgeous associate with too much personality and too little patience.
Ling stayed home , not because she lacked ambition or opportunity, but because for the first time in her life, she wanted stillness. She wanted rest. She wanted the kind of quiet that wasn’t punishment but a choice.
She volunteered with pro bono clients when needed, but otherwise she cooked hearty meals, folded laundry with frightening precision, paid the bills, deep-cleaned the apartment, reorganized the pantry, watered the plants, planned their future, scheduled dentist appointments they kept canceling… all while wearing soft house shorts and Orm’s old shirts.
She wasn’t a housewife.
Orm wasn’t the breadwinner.
But Ling , with her hedge fund, her emergency fund, her trust, her savings accounts, and her inability to spend impulsively , somehow paid all the bills.
Thank god, because Orm , with her Dior obsession, thirty-seven lip balms, and inability to resist a “limited edition” label , had the financial restraint of a drunk lottery winner.
And on the first morning of the month, Orm wrapped up work early and came home before noon , an extremely rare phenomenon.
She opened the door, already calling out:
“Baby! I’m home early, you can celebrate me now,”
She froze.
Ling sat at the dining table looking like a woman running a small corporation. Papers everywhere. Receipts, envelopes, spreadsheets, color-coded sticky notes, calculators… Ling’s glasses sliding down her nose… her bun lopsided from stress… her brows pulled together in accountant agony.
“…Lingling?” Orm whispered. “Why do you look like the IRS rejected you?”
Ling looked up slowly. “Orm. Sit down.”
“Oh god,” Orm said, dropping her bag instantly. “Is this an intervention? Are you pregnant? Is the rent due?”
“Sit,” Ling repeated, pointing to the chair like a school principal.
Orm obeyed with the fear of someone who once dated a professor.
Ling inhaled. “We need to discuss finances.”
“NO,” Orm said immediately.
“YES.”
“LING, PLEASE NO,” Orm whined dramatically. “Our relationship is strong. Don’t ruin it with budgeting.”
Ling held up three printouts. “Orm. I listed all my accounts.”
Orm blinked. “You have… plural?”
Ling set them down neatly. “Savings. Retirement fund. Hedge fund. Emergency fund. Trust account. Joint investments. Liquid assets,”
“STOP,” Orm begged. “I’m too pretty to hear all that.”
Ling sighed. “And then I checked your savings.”
Orm froze like a deer in headlights. “You what now?”
Ling pushed the paper toward her.
Four thousand dollars.
Orm stared at the number like it personally betrayed her ancestors.
“Ling,” Orm whispered. “Why did you check?”
“Because we’re building a life together,”
“No, why did you check?” Orm repeated, scandalized. “You should’ve respected my privacy.”
Ling raised an eyebrow. “Baby. You logged into your bank account on the TV last week.”
Orm gasped. “So what? You think I’m ashamed?!”
“Yes,” Ling said.
“Yes,” Orm admitted.
Ling tapped the number. “This is it? You only saved four thousand?”
Orm corrected proudly: “Four thousand and sixty-two. Round up, please.”
Ling stared. “Orm. You’re twenty-eight years old. You make six figures. You’ve been working for two years. Where did your money go?”
Orm spread her arms wide. “BEHOLD.”
Ling blinked. “…behold what?”
Orm pointed dramatically at herself. “Do you think all this came out of nothing?”
Ling opened her mouth…
…and instantly shut it.
She did not want to die today.
Orm smirked. “Exactly.”
Ling rubbed her temples. “Baby… you spend like a billionaire.”
“I act like one too,” Orm said proudly. “Next compliment?”
Ling exhaled deeply. “My love… when the apocalypse comes, how will you survive?”
“Easy,” Orm said. “I’ll eat your hedge fund.”
“ORM.”
Orm shrugged. “Not my fault I’m dating a sugar mommy.”
Ling choked. “Do not call me,”
KNOCK.
KNOCK.
Orm jumped. “If that’s divine punishment for calling you a sugar mommy, tell them to wait.”
She opened the door.
And three movers marched in with giant brown boxes stacked to the ceiling.
“Deliveries for Lingling Kwong!” one announced.
Orm’s eyes widened. “What the hell is this?”
Ling peeked from behind her. “Oh. My belongings.”
Orm turned slowly, like a villain discovering her origin story. “…from your ex-wife’s house?”
Ling winced. “Yes.”
Orm looked at the boxes. Then at Ling. Then at the boxes again.
“Wow,” she said sweetly. “Your ex-wife sent more presents.”
“ORM.”
Orm crossed her arms. “I love this. I love living inside your failed marriage. Very aesthetic.”
Ling covered her face. “Please stop.”
“No truly,” Orm said, following the movers dramatically, “bring them all in. We have so much space! The apartment only has what? Five square feet left?”
“M’am, where do these go?” a mover asked.
Orm spread her arms. “Anywhere. Everywhere. On my grave.”
Ling hissed, “ORM, BE NICE.”
“I AM NICE,” Orm yelled. “I’m being accommodating to the trauma.”
Ling sighed. “I’ll unpack everything after my meeting.”
“You better,” Orm muttered. “Before we become a storage facility.”
Ling grabbed her briefcase, walked over, and kissed her cheek softly. “I’ll be back by three. Don’t stress.”
“Oh I’m not stressed,” Orm said. “I’m suffocating under three boxes labeled LING’S WINTER SCARVES. But stress? No no.”
Ling laughed and kissed her again. “I love you.”
“Love you,” Orm said brightly. “Now go be a superhero.”
Ling left.
The apartment door clicked shut.
And Orm stood there… surrounded by cardboard towers… hands on hips… Ling’s perfume still lingering in the air.
She sighed loudly.
“Well,” she said, staring at the mountain of boxes, “guess it’s just me and the ghost of her marriage today.”
She kicked one lightly.
“Sugar mommy better hurry home.”
Orm stood there, arms crossed, glaring at the cardboard mountain like it had personally insulted her. Ling was always the one who handled life , cleaning, cooking, organizing, sorting, scheduling , all the invisible labor done with quiet love.
But today… Orm looked at the chaos and thought:
She does everything for me. I can do this for her.
She sighed dramatically.
“Okay, Lingling… I’ll be the responsible adult today. God help us.”
She rolled up the sleeves of her blouse with the exaggerated flair of a woman preparing for battle. Then she grabbed a box cutter and approached the nearest tower labeled:
LING’S WINTER SCARVES
“Liar,” Orm muttered. “There’s no way this big-ass box is just scarves. She’s hiding something.”
She sliced through the tape, expecting cashmere.
Instead…
Books.
Old, worn novels with folded corners.
Stacks of case files she must’ve brought home during her Harvard years.
A couple of thick binders.
And under those… a small stack of journals bound with red elastic.
Orm froze.
“Scarves my ass,” she whispered. “This is emotional contraband.”
She hesitated , just for a second.
She shouldn’t snoop.
She knew she shouldn’t.
Ling’s journals were private.
Personal.
But Orm had never been blessed with self-control or boundaries.
Also, Ling had kept these books like treasure.
Orm recognized the spines , Ling used to read them in bed while Orm lay on her stomach, texting or complaining about professors.
Orm pulled the journals out carefully and placed them on the coffee table.
She sat cross-legged in front of them, heart suddenly beating faster.
Each one was labeled with a small date in Ling’s neat handwriting.
Orm’s breath stilled.
There it was.
The year they met.
Her fingers hovered over the journal… almost trembling.
She whispered to herself:
“Okay… you’re not snooping. You’re… archiving. Helping. Organizing. Yeah.”
She opened it.
The first page wasn’t neat.
It wasn’t structured.
It wasn’t the precise, controlled Lingling handwriting Orm was used to.
It was messy.
Rushed.
Like Ling had written it in one breath.
Orm felt her heart curl inward.
She began to read.
August 4, 2018
As promised myself, I am starting to write a journal. And today is the First day of the program, Second year as a guest lecture. My students are clever… too clever maybe.
But there was one girl. One.
Orm.
She answered a question before I finished asking.
Confidence like caffeine.
Smiled at me like we shared a secret.
I felt something I haven’t felt in years… maybe ever.
She stole my Café Mocha, called in beautiful and asked me on a date.
I said no of course, because I am married.
But why did it feel hard to say no?
God help me.
Orm pressed a hand to her mouth.
Her throat tightened.
She flipped to another page.
August 6, 2018
Guess what? I saw her again today. She was volunteering at the soup kitchen and oh god… she looked so cute in that apron I almost forgot how to breathe. Her smile… that damn smile, flutters my heart in ways it absolutely should not.
But… damn.
She told me to stop talking about my wife. Said she wants to know me. Asked why I keep faking my smile.
She doesn’t get it, which somehow makes it even cuter.
No one has ever asked to see my real smile before. No one has ever cared what I wanted.
But she did… and my heart jumped again, traitorous and loud.
To it I say: calm down, you are married
August 7, 2018
She sits in the front.
Always.
Always watching.
Always smiling.
I pretend it doesn’t affect me.
It does.
It really does.
Orm swallowed hard.
Her chest felt warm and achy all at once.
She kept reading.
August 8, 2018
I kissed her tonight.
I can barely get my hand to stop shaking long enough to write that, but it’s the only truth in my head right now.
It was the Monday after the soup kitchen. Everything felt normal at first, same coffee, same drive, same lecture notes, but I knew something was different the moment I walked into my office. I had been thinking about her all weekend. Orm. The way she had leaned forward at that café, how she listened like my words mattered, how she looked at me like she could see through the quiet parts of me no one ever asks about.
I tried to ignore it. Buried myself in grading, in lecture planning, in anything that wasn’t her.
Then I saw her in class. That smile she gives me, too bright, too unguarded, it shook me. I pretended not to feel it. Failed.
After class, I fled before she could catch me. I needed distance. Space. Control.
And then I saw her again, in the parking lot, standing beside her car under a yellow streetlight, swearing at her fuel tank. Of course she had run out of gas. Of course I walked toward her instead of away.
I offered her a ride. I shouldn’t have.
I followed her into her apartment. I really shouldn’t have.
She gave me tea. Sat too close. Watched me with those impossible eyes. Told me she liked me. Asked to know me better. I told her it was dangerous. She asked me to tell her to stop.
I didn’t.
I leaned in. She leaned in. Our foreheads touched. And then
I kissed her.
God, I kissed her.
It was soft. Too soft to undo, too real to pretend away.
And then the guilt hit so hard I could barely breathe. I told her it meant nothing. I walked out before I could think, before I could break even more rules than I already have.
But the truth is here, on paper where I can’t lie:
I have wanted to kiss her for a long, long time.
And I don’t know what to do with that.
August 10, 2018
I have been avoiding her.
After that coffee… after the way her eyes softened at me, after the way she said things she shouldn’t say…
I panicked.
Every time I felt her presence in a hallway, I rerouted.
Every time she looked for a moment with me, I escaped.
But she stays in my head.
Even when I don’t want her to.
Especially then.
She turned another page.
August 15, 2018
I’ve avoided writing this down, but maybe seeing the words will make the chaos quieter.
All week I tried to pretend that kiss meant nothing. I buried myself in work, in papers, in anything that kept my hands from shaking. I avoided Orm like she was fire. And still she stayed in every corner of my mind.
I thought distance would fix it. Instead, jealousy did something ugly to me. I saw her laughing with another girl, leaning close, and something in my chest twisted so sharply I had to leave the room. I’m not proud of it. It was childish. It was real.
Today I broke.
I drove to her apartment without planning to. I told myself it was for clarity, control, closure. But the moment she opened the door, everything I’d been running from came rushing back.
I told her the truth, about the jealousy, about the marriage that isn’t a marriage, about how she makes me feel seen in ways I wish she didn’t. And she listened. Quietly. Carefully. Like she always does.
And somehow, in all that truth, we found something small and fragile to hold on to.
We decided to try. Whatever “this” is. No promises, no futures, just honesty. Carefully.
It terrifies me how much relief I felt when she didn’t let me walk away.
Maybe this is a mistake. Maybe it’s the first real thing I’ve allowed myself in years.
I don’t know yet.
All I know is I walked away lighter than I arrived. And that scares me more than anything.
Orm closed her eyes.
She remembered that day.
Orm remembered Ling’s voice shaking when she said she wanted to try... carefully... no promises... no futures... just truth.
She remembered how strange and beautiful it felt to be chosen by her.
To be the one Ling came undone for.
But the journal in her hands felt heavier than memory.
Heavier than truth.
Orm’s fingers trembled as she flipped through the pages... searching for more... searching for what she already feared.
Most of the early years were empty.
Blank.
A life Ling never recorded because she never needed to.
And then...
after 2021...
Ink.
A flood of it.
A year’s worth of grief poured into paper like Ling had been bleeding instead of writing.
Orm’s breath caught.
Her throat closed.
She turned the page.
June 4, 2021
The handwriting is shaky, the ink bleeding through the page.
I can’t stop shaking.
It’s been 3 days.
I keep counting them like someone trapped in a cell marks scratches into stone.
She didn’t call.
She didn’t write.
She didn’t look back.
I don’t know how a person disappears so fast.
How someone can go from being my future to being air.
I came home to the divorce papers that I asked for, still on the table.
Miu saw them.
She didn’t touch them.
She didn’t yell.
She just looked at me like I was something bleeding on her floor.
I told her,
“She left.”
The words were so small they shattered in my mouth.
Miu whispered,
“I am sorry”
Her kindness hurt worse than knives.
The ring is still in my pocket.
I keep touching it like a wound.
Like proof that I wasn’t hallucinating her.
God, I wish I could sleep.
I wish I could stop waking up reaching for someone who chose to forget me.
I wish I could stop wanting to vanish into the quiet.
I feel hollow.
I feel stupid.
I feel ruined.
Please…
please…
please stop hurting.
June 14, 2021
Dried tear-stains smudge entire lines. Several words are crossed out violently.
My mother asked me today why I look thinner.
My father asked why I look older.
I told them I’m tired.
They didn’t believe me.
They never believe me.
They only believe the version of me that never breaks.
If they knew I begged someone to choose me and she walked away
No.
I can’t write that.
It makes me sick to see it.
Miu pretends nothing happened.
She makes dinner.
She makes tea.
She makes space for me to fall apart without saying the words.
Sometimes I wish she would scream.
Sometimes I wish someone would.
This silence is killing me faster than any fight.
Tonight I sat on the bathroom floor pressing the ring into my palm until it left a mark.
A red circle.
A promise that never got spoken.
It’s pathetic.
I’m pathetic.
Why can’t I let her go?
Why can’t my heart understand she left?
Why does everything feel so loud, so sharp, so unbearable?
I want the noise to stop.
I want the thoughts to stop.
I want the world to stop.
Just for a moment.
Just long enough to breathe without feeling like I’m drowning.
July 2, 2021
The handwriting slants downward, jagged, rushed.
I woke up today and didn’t know where I was.
My chest hurt.
My throat hurt.
My eyes hurt.
Everything hurt.
I called her name before I was awake.
Miu heard me.
She froze in the doorway and looked at me like I was a ghost.
She asked,
“Does she know you loved her that much?”
I almost screamed.
Instead I laughed.
It sounded wrong.
Broken.
Like something bending until it snaps.
No, Miu.
She doesn’t know.
She didn’t stay long enough to know.
I ruined everything for someone who didn’t want me.
I destroyed a marriage, a life, a version of myself…
…for a woman who vanished.
There are moments I stare out the window and think how easy it would be to disappear.
Not die.
Not jump.
Just… stop existing.
Stop feeling.
Stop remembering the way she said my name.
The world keeps moving.
I don’t know how to follow it.
July 15, 2021
Ink splattered at the edges, lines shaky, written as if her hand was trembling.
I drove past her building again.
I don’t know why I do this.
It feels like slicing myself open on purpose.
Her balcony lights used to be on at 1 a.m.
Now it’s dark.
I sat in the car gripping the steering wheel so tight my fingers went numb.
I tried to remember her laugh.
It slipped away.
Like everything else.
I started crying so hard I couldn’t breathe.
I pressed my forehead to the wheel and wished the world would go quiet.
Just for a second.
Just long enough to forget her face.
Why wasn’t I enough?
Why wasn’t I worth an explanation?
A goodbye?
I would have burned my whole life down for her.
I did.
And she let me stand alone in the ashes.
Some nights I think if I could peel this grief off me like skin, I would.
I would tear it off and leave it on the side of the road.
I am so tired.
God, I am so tired.
July 31,2021
The page is warped from water damage, either tears or spilled water. The ink is blurred.
I found the ring today while cleaning.
The little box.
The receipt.
The stupid note I wrote practicing how to ask her.
I put the ring on.
Just to see.
Just to torture myself.
Just to feel something.
It fit.
Perfectly.
Of course it did.
Then I threw it across the room.
Then I crawled on the floor looking for it, crying so hard I couldn’t see.
Miu found me.
She didn’t ask.
She didn’t speak.
She just sat beside me like she was guarding the pieces of me I can’t hold anymore.
She whispered,
“You deserved someone who stayed.”
I started crying again because I don’t believe that.
I don’t deserve anything.
Not love.
Not forgiveness.
Not peace.
I want the year to end.
I want the ache to end.
I want to sleep without dreaming of her leaving.
I want to disappear into silence.
Into air.
Into nothing.
Maybe next year will hurt less.
But I know it won’t.
August 11, 2021
Several lines are scratched out so hard the paper nearly rips.
I opened the closet today and found the shirt she left behind.
The grey one.
Soft.
Worn.
Still smelling faintly like her
coffee and rain and something warm.
I pressed it to my face and everything inside me broke open like a wound that never closed properly.
I sat on the floor clutching it like a dying thing.
Rocking back and forth like I was trying to comfort myself.
Or punish myself.
I don’t know which.
I whispered her name until it sounded wrong.
Until it wasn’t a word anymore.
Just breath and pain and whatever is left of me.
I don’t know why she left.
I don’t know why she didn’t tell me.
I don’t know why I wasn’t worth a goodbye.
I keep thinking
Did she ever love me?
Or was I just a moment she regretted too late?
God, I hate myself for wanting answers.
I hate myself for missing her.
I hate myself for not being able to breathe without her shadow in this apartment.
I wish I could go back to before I knew her.
Before my heart learned her name.
Before I ruined everything.
But even if I had that choice…
I would choose her again.
Every time.
Even knowing how it ends.
And that…
that is the worst part.
August 21, 2021
The ink is smeared at the edges; several drops warped the left margin.
I tried to focus at work today.
Gave a speech.
Talked about justice.
Women’s rights.
Freedom.
Strength.
All lies.
Words are so easy when they don’t belong to you.
People praised me afterward.
Said I looked calm.
Powerful.
Collected.
I smiled.
Thanked them.
Shook hands.
Then I went into the bathroom stall and sat with my head in my hands, shaking so hard my teeth rattled.
I can’t feel anything.
But sometimes…
everything hits at once.
Today walking home, the sky was grey.
It looked like Boston in the first winter I knew her.
I stopped walking.
My chest hurt.
My throat closed.
I thought I might collapse right there on the sidewalk.
Some man asked if I was okay.
I said yes.
Why do I keep lying?
Why can’t I admit that I’m drowning?
Why can’t I just say her name without breaking?
I want one hour,
just one,
where my heart doesn’t feel like something rotting inside me.
I want silence.
The deep kind.
The kind where nothing hurts.
I wonder if that exists.
September 20, 2021
Written in uneven lines, like she wrote it lying down.
Miu left the light on for me tonight.
I didn’t deserve that.
She made me soup.
Sat beside me.
Said nothing.
Just stayed.
I don’t know why her kindness hurts so much.
Maybe because it reminds me that I broke her, too.
She asked if I wanted to talk.
I said no.
I always say no.
But I want to scream.
I want to claw at the walls.
I want to tear every memory out of my head.
Every laugh.
Every glance.
Every whispered goodnight.
I want to stop hurting Miu with my sadness.
I want to stop hurting myself with my hope.
I want to live in a world where I never held Orm’s face in my hands.
Never kissed her.
Never imagined a life with her.
But I did.
And now every version of the future feels dead.
Orm didn’t move for a long time.
She sat on the floor with the journal clutched against her chest like it was a corpse she’d found too late to save.
Her breath came in shallow bursts... almost choking her.
She kept whispering the same words over and over, like a prayer or a punishment.
“I didn’t know...
Ling... I didn’t know...
God, I didn’t know...
I’m so sorry...
I’m so sorry...
I’m so sorry...”
Her tears dripped onto the pages…
mingling with Ling’s dried ones…
as if the past and present grief were reaching for each other across years.
Orm pressed her forehead to the journal again.
“Baby... if I had known...
I would have burned the world to get back to you...
I would have crawled back to you...
I would have never left you alone in this...
Never…”
Her voice broke completely.
She curled around the journal like someone sheltering a wounded animal.
The guilt swallowed her whole.
The grief buried her.
This moment changed her.
Completely.
Irreversibly.
Because now Orm understood something brutal:
Ling didn’t just love her.
Ling survived losing her.
Barely.
And Orm would carry that truth like a scar for the rest of her life.
These are the pages where Ling stops sounding like a woman who is heartbroken…
and starts sounding like a woman who has forgotten how to be alive.
These pages should destroy Orm.
These pages should destroy the reader.
These pages are where Orm finally understands the full death Ling lived through while still breathing.
January 19th 2022,
The handwriting is uneven, words slanting upward and then collapsing. Some sentences scratch out completely.
I don’t think I’ve spoken to anyone properly in days.
Miu keeps asking if I want to go out.
To dinner.
For a walk.
Anywhere that isn’t this apartment that feels like a mausoleum of our failure.
I always say “Maybe later.”
There is no later.
There is no anything.
I work.
I sleep.
I wake up and remember she’s gone.
Then I pretend I’m made of stone so no one sees I’m hollow.
Tonight I sat at the dining table and stared at the ring box for almost an hour.
Not opening it.
Just staring.
Like looking at poison.
I don’t know why I’m writing.
Maybe because I don’t know how to keep these thoughts from devouring me.
I don’t want to die.
But sometimes I wish I’d never existed.
Maybe the world would feel less heavy if I wasn’t trying to breathe inside it.
God, I’m tired.
So tired my bones ache.
So tired that closing my eyes feels like falling.
I don’t know how to be alive like this.
February 14,2022
Valentine’s Day. The writing is small, cramped. The page has water damage.
Everyone at the office received chocolates today.
Flowers.
Cards.
Someone left roses on my desk.
I threw them away.
I don’t know why.
The sight of them made something inside me recoil.
I used to believe in love.
I used to think it was worth fighting for.
Worth breaking rules for.
Worth tearing apart a life for.
Now I look at the word love
and feel nothing.
Not even bitterness.
Just a hollow space where belief used to live.
I wish I could feel warmth again.
Even anger would be something.
Instead it feels like someone turned off the lights inside my chest and never turned them back on.
I dreamed of her last night.
She turned toward me and her face disappeared into fog.
I woke up trembling.
Not from sadness.
From fear.
Fear that the dream is right.
Fear that one day I won’t remember her at all.
And the truth is…
I think that would kill me more than this emptiness ever could.
March 30th 2022
Her handwriting is almost illegible here , rushed, uneven, like her hand kept slipping.
I had a panic attack today.
The first in years.
It came out of nowhere.
I was at the grocery store.
Someone walked past wearing her perfume.
The same one she used before exams.
My vision blurred.
My hands shook so violently I dropped a jar of pasta sauce.
It shattered everywhere.
Red on the floor.
Red on my shoes.
Red like something bleeding.
A manager came over.
Asked if I was alright.
I couldn’t answer.
Couldn’t breathe.
I left the cart.
Left the store.
Left my own skin, I think.
Came home shaking.
Miu tried to hug me.
I stepped back.
I didn’t mean to.
I just… couldn’t be touched.
Not when my skin felt like it remembered her hands.
I hate this.
I hate that her memory controls me like this.
I hate that after all this time I am still a wound shaped like her.
I want freedom.
But every path out of this feels like fog.
April 6, 2022
The ink is lighter, as if the pen was running out , or she was pressing too softly to commit.
I found myself sitting in my parked car for two hours today.
Engine off.
Silence heavy.
I don’t know why I didn’t go inside.
I don’t know why I couldn’t move.
Maybe because I knew there was nothing inside waiting for me.
No warmth.
No laughter.
No life that feels like mine.
I caught my reflection in the mirror.
I didn’t recognize her.
Her eyes looked empty.
Like the light had gone out.
I touched my face and felt nothing but cold skin.
I used to be soft.
God, I used to be so soft.
She made me soft.
Now I feel carved from something harder.
Harsher.
Unkind.
People call it strength.
It isn’t strength.
It’s absence.
It’s the shape of my body learning to stand without a heart.
I sometimes wonder if Orm would recognize me now.
If she would still love me.
If she ever did.
Maybe I am a stranger even to the woman I became for her.
May 11th, 2022
The handwriting is unstable… some letters too big, some too small… ink spots like her hand shook.
I woke up today and the first thing I thought was
she should be here.
She should be the one waking me up with cold hands and a kiss on my cheek.
She should be the one holding a stupid cupcake with a crooked candle.
She should be the one teasing me…
calling me old…
making me laugh before I even remember how to breathe.
Instead I woke up alone.
Miu made breakfast.
She set the table with flowers.
She tried.
God, she tried.
But all I could think was how last year…
last year Orm made me pancakes shaped like hearts.
They were awful.
Burnt on one side.
Too sweet on the other.
She pretended she meant to make them like that.
I pretended to believe her.
I laughed so hard that day.
My cheeks hurt.
My stomach hurt.
My heart felt full.
I didn’t know it would be the last birthday I spent loving someone with my whole chest.
Today Miu asked if I wanted a cake.
I said no.
I don’t want anything.
Not food.
Not gifts.
Not wishes.
All I want is the one thing I can’t have.
I want Orm sitting across from me,
smiling that shy smile she only ever wore for me,
saying,
“Happy birthday, Ling…”
I want to hear her say my name again.
I want to feel alive again.
It’s pathetic.
I’m pathetic.
Crying on my own birthday over a woman who left without saying goodbye.
But God…
God, it hurts.
I don’t want to celebrate anything without her.
I don’t even feel like a person today.
Just a body remembering what it felt like to be loved.
May 27, 2022
This page is worse. The left side is rippled… clearly wet at some point. The ink is warped where teardrops fell directly.
I shouldn’t know the date by heart.
But I do.
I woke up today with a weight on my chest before I even opened my eyes.
I knew what day it was.
My body knew.
It used to be my favorite day.
I used to plan for it weeks in advance…
hide gifts around her apartment…
wake her up at midnight with cake on a fork and icing on my thumb she always pretended not to see.
She used to smile at me like I’d hung the moon.
Like I was something worth being surprised by.
She’s not mine anymore.
She hasn’t been for almost two years.
I shouldn’t think about her.
I shouldn’t ache like this.
I shouldn’t sit on this floor like a ghost holding memories that don’t belong to me anymore.
But all day I kept wondering…
is she celebrating?
Is she happy?
Is someone else making her laugh the way I used to?
Is she blowing out candles with another face beside hers?
I hate myself for wanting the answers.
I hate myself for wanting her.
I didn’t tell Miu what today is.
She asked why I looked pale.
Why my hands were shaking.
Why I wouldn’t eat.
I told her I was tired.
I’m so tired of lying.
I’m so tired of being this version of myself.
I stood in the kitchen for a long time tonight…
hand on the drawer where the ring is…
thinking about the birthday dinner we were supposed to have this year.
About the life we were supposed to build.
I lit a candle.
Just one.
Not for me.
For her.
I whispered,
“Happy birthday, baby…”
The flame flickered.
My chest broke open.
I cried until the candle went out.
I don’t know why I still love someone who left me behind.
I don’t know why her birthday hurts more than my own.
I don’t know how to make this stop.
I just know I miss her.
More today than yesterday.
More tomorrow than today.
And it terrifies me how endless this longing feels.
July 15,2022
There are fingerprints in the ink. Like she touched the page while crying.
I saw someone today with hair like hers.
I stopped walking.
In the middle of the sidewalk.
Like an idiot.
My heart started racing so hard I thought it would snap in half.
It wasn’t her.
Of course it wasn’t her.
She’s not here.
She’s not anywhere I can reach.
She’s probably forgotten me.
Forgotten my voice.
Forgotten the way I said her name.
I came home shaking.
Miu asked what was wrong.
I said,
“Nothing.”
She looked at me for a long time.
Then said,
“You’re allowed to miss her.”
I started crying.
Just one tear.
It hit the floor and I wiped it before she could see.
It’s stupid ,
that after everything,
after breaking my own life in half,
after losing everything I knew,
after choosing her ,
the thing that hurts most is that she never chose me back.
I wish I could forget.
I wish forgetting didn’t feel like cutting off my own hands.
August 31st 2022
The ink is smudged as if she wrote through tears she didn’t wipe away.
Miu told me today she forgives me.
I don’t know why that broke me so violently I had to sit down.
She said,
“I know you loved her.
And I know you stayed because she didn’t stay for you.”
The gentleness in her voice felt like a wound opening.
I told her I was sorry.
That I never meant to hurt her.
That I thought,
God, I don’t even know what I thought.
That I could have something real.
Something that was mine.
Something that wasn’t built on duty or silence.
She held my hand and said,
“You deserved happiness.”
I laughed.
It sounded like choking.
I don’t know who I am anymore.
I don’t know where she ends and I begin.
I don’t know how to live without feeling like I’m waiting for someone who never meant to return.
I wish I could disappear into the quiet.
Into that space where memory doesn’t reach me.
Where my chest doesn’t feel like it’s caving in.
I wish I could forget her.
But I don’t think forgetting is possible when someone has carved their name into the inside of your ribs.
October 27,2022
I broke a glass today.
Not on purpose.
Not from anger.
It just slipped from my hand.
But when it shattered on the floor, something inside me reacted like I was watching myself fall apart again.
And then I…
I don’t know what happened.
I sank to the floor and started picking up the pieces with my bare hands.
I didn’t even feel the cuts at first.
Didn’t feel anything.
Miu pulled me away.
She held my wrists and said my name over and over.
I didn’t cry.
I just stared at my hands like I didn’t recognize them.
I used to be gentle.
I used to be soft.
I used to love so fiercely it terrified me.
Now I feel like something hollowed out.
Something sharp.
Something dangerous.
I don’t know when I became this.
I don’t know how to undo it.
I don’t know if I want to.
Maybe this is what happens when you lose someone who felt like oxygen.
Maybe you stop breathing and call it living.
November 18, 2022
The handwriting drags… as if each letter took effort.
I cleaned the kitchen today because the silence was too loud.
I wiped the counters three times.
Rearranged the mugs.
Scrubbed the stove until my hands ached.
Nothing felt cleaner.
Nothing felt different.
I opened the drawer where the ring is…
and just stared at it.
Not touching it.
Not crying.
Just staring.
Like I was waiting for it to move.
Or breathe.
Or disappear.
I don’t know why I keep it.
I don’t know why I can’t throw it away.
I don’t know why my chest hurts every time I close the drawer.
Miu asked if I wanted to talk.
I told her,
“There’s nothing left to say.”
She looked at me like she didn’t believe that.
But it’s true.
Talking won’t bring her back.
Talking won’t turn back time.
Talking won’t stop this grief from sinking its teeth into me.
I feel like I’m rotting from the inside out.
December 22, 2022
Ink thick in some places, thin in others… written through shaking.
Everyone’s decorating for Christmas.
Lights everywhere.
Carols.
Markets.
Warmth.
It all feels obscene.
I walked past a couple today holding hands.
She leaned her head on his shoulder and he kissed her hair and they laughed like the world didn’t hurt.
I wanted to scream at them.
I wanted to rip the air apart for daring to be gentle to someone else when it refuses to be gentle to me.
I kept imagining what this Christmas would have been.
Her stealing ornaments from stores because she always said the best ones are the most expensive.
Me rolling my eyes and pretending I didn’t agree.
Her decorating everything crooked.
Me fixing it behind her.
I miss the future I never got to have.
I miss her more during holidays…
I think because everyone else is celebrating and I’m barely surviving.
I wish December didn’t exist.
January 9, 2023
I had a dream last night.
She was sitting on the couch…
wearing one of my shirts…
reading something…
smiling.
I walked toward her and she opened her arms.
She said my name the way she used to.
Soft.
Warm.
Like I was something worth loving.
I woke up with tears on my pillow.
For a second I reached for her.
Instinct.
Habit.
Hope.
But then the dark room came into focus.
And the dream burned out like a match.
I sat up and pressed my hands to my face until my palms were wet.
I would give anything…
anything…
to hear her say my name again.
It’s terrifying how much a single word can undo me
February 2, 2023
Cramped handwriting… ink pooling at the bottom of some letters.
I saw a woman wearing her coat today.
Not the same one.
But close enough.
My throat closed.
My stomach dropped.
My knees felt weak.
For one horrifying second I thought it was her.
It wasn’t.
Of course it wasn’t.
I ducked into a bookstore and stood there breathing like I’d run a marathon.
I picked up a book she always wanted to read.
I held it for a long time.
My fingers trembling around the spine.
Miu found me there.
She didn’t ask.
She didn’t need to.
I put the book back.
I walked out feeling like someone had carved a hole in my chest.
I don’t know why grief feels like a trap door.
Or why my heart keeps falling through it.
April 12, 2023
This page is slightly crumpled, like she gripped it too hard while writing.
I don’t talk much anymore.
People at work think I’m focused.
Disciplined.
Driven.
Really I’m just empty.
It’s easier to stay quiet.
Easier to keep my head down.
Easier to pretend that silence is a choice.
I saw a couple fighting in the hallway today.
Their voices were loud.
Their anger messy.
For a moment I envied them.
Envy.
Can you believe that?
I envied people who were hurting each other because at least it meant they were still connected.
At least they still cared enough to break.
I don’t have anything left to fight for.
Some days I wonder what I’m even holding onto.
Some days I wonder why I’m still here.
Not wanting to die.
Just…
wondering what living even means anymore.
I don’t recognize myself.
May 31st 2023
It’s been two years.
Two years since she vanished.
Two years since I stood in that empty apartment waiting for a door that never opened.
Two years since I heard her laugh.
Two years since I let myself be vulnerable enough to love someone without restraint.
I thought time would heal this.
Time hasn’t healed anything.
It’s only made the loneliness quieter.
Quieter… but deeper.
Like a well I keep falling into.
Some days I feel like I’m only pretending to be alive.
Like I’m walking through a life I no longer recognize.
Like the version of me who existed with her died the moment she walked away.
Maybe that’s dramatic.
Maybe it’s true.
Tonight I held the ring again.
The one that was supposed to be hers.
It doesn’t hurt as sharply now.
The pain is duller…
like a bruise that never healed.
Sometimes I wonder what I would say if she walked back into my life.
If I would scream.
If I would laugh.
If I would crumble at her feet.
I think the truth is simpler:
I would breathe again.
For the first time in years.
I would breathe.
But she isn’t coming back.
People don’t return to ghosts.
People don’t come looking for wreckage.
Maybe in another lifetime.
Maybe in another version of me.
Maybe somewhere I didn’t lose everything trying to love her.
I’m so tired.
I wish I could sleep for a long, long time.
Maybe tomorrow I’ll feel less hollow.
Maybe not.
The page is blurry.
I can’t see.
I’ll stop here.
I can’t write anymore.
Orm couldn’t move.
She felt like she had been hollowed out, carved open, emptied.
Everything inside her shook…
her hands…
her breath…
her voice.
Her tears fell so fast they soaked into the journal cover.
She whispered, again and again, voice breaking:
“Ling… my Ling…
you survived this alone…
you carried this alone…
because of me…
because I left…
because I didn’t know…
I’m so sorry…
I’m so sorry…
I’m so sorry…”
She clutched the journals to her chest like they were Ling’s ribs, cracked and fragile.
And something inside Orm shattered beyond repair.
Because now she understood the truth:
Ling didn’t just love her.
Ling didn’t just miss her.
Ling lived through two years of death in slow motion.
Because of her.
Ling missed Orm so much.
She was walking up the hallway thinking about basil and garlic and whether she had remembered to buy the good jasmine rice, the one Orm pretended wasn’t different but always ate faster. It had been a long afternoon, her shoulders ached, and all she wanted was to kick off her shoes, kiss her girlfriend, and complain about politicians until they were both laughing.
She heard the faint hum of the air conditioner, the soft fridge motor, the familiar quiet of home.
“I am home, my sugar baby…” she called out as she unlocked the door, the words automatic now, worn soft with use.
The apartment smelled like their detergent and the faint ghost of Orm’s perfume. Ling stepped inside, nudged the door shut with her hip, kicked her heels aside, grocery bags rustling in her hands.
She turned the corner into the living room…
And the world tilted.
Journals.
Her journals.
Open and spread out on the floor like a crime scene she had tried to bury.
And in the middle of them… Orm.
Knees drawn up.
Hair mussed.
Face wrecked.
Eyes red in a way Ling hadn’t seen since Boston.
Ling’s breath caught in her throat. Something inside her chest pulled tight, sharp, like a wire yanked too hard.
The bags slid from her hands. Plastic and vegetables hit the tile with a dull sound she barely heard.
“…Orm…”
It came out as more air than voice.
For half a heartbeat she couldn’t move. The image slammed into her… Orm’s fingers resting on the warped page of June… the tear stains old and new… Ling’s own broken handwriting staring back at her from another lifetime.
She remembered writing those words.
On the bathroom floor, back pressed to the cabinet.
On the edge of the bed at 3 a.m.
At the kitchen table with the light off, the city outside a blur.
She remembered pressing the pen so hard it almost tore the paper.
She remembered crying so much the ink ran.
She remembered thinking, over and over, that no one would ever see this… that it was safe because it would stay buried with all the parts of herself she’d sealed away.
And now her girlfriend… her Orm… was sitting in the very middle of it.
Orm lifted her head.
For a second their eyes met.
Ling felt it then… the ache… a physical thing. Like someone reached into her ribcage and wrenched.
“I didn’t know it was THIS bad…” Orm’s voice broke, splitting in the middle like glass dropped on pavement.
Ling moved.
She crossed the distance on instinct, dropping to her knees so fast they stung. Her hands hovered for a moment, shaking above Orm’s face… like she was afraid to touch her, afraid she might shatter further.
“Oh sweetheart…” Ling whispered.
“You weren’t supposed to see this…”
She had never meant for Orm to find any of it.
The journals weren’t just sadness on paper… they were the version of herself she had survived. The Ling who slept with the ring box under her pillow. The Ling who forgot how to laugh. The Ling who stood in front of a mirror and didn’t know the woman looking back.
She would have burned them before ever letting Orm think she was responsible for every line.
But it was too late.
Orm’s shoulders shook. Her mouth opened like she was searching for air and apology at the same time.
“I didn’t know you were hurting like this…” she choked.
“I didn’t know you were waking up alone and… and writing these things… I didn’t know you were drowning… I didn’t know you were dying without me, Ling… I didn’t know…”
Ling’s heart broke cleanly in her chest.
Because she had imagined this moment over and over. Not exactly, not on this floor, not with these pages… but the feeling of Orm knowing… really knowing what those years did to her. And every time she imagined it, it hurt.
But she also knew something else… as clearly as she knew her own name:
If this was the price of loving Orm… she would pay it again.
She reached out, finally, and cupped Orm’s face with both hands.
“Baby…” she murmured, her thumbs catching fresh tears.
“Look at me.”
Orm tried… failed… tried again. Her gaze was unfocused, drowning in guilt.
Ling leaned in until their foreheads touched. It grounded her too.
“You didn’t leave me,” Ling said softly.
The words were a rope she threw between them.
“You were taken from me. I know that. I know everything now. That is the only truth I care about.”
Orm sobbed, her hands fisting in Ling’s shirt.
“But you suffered alone…”
“And now I don’t,” Ling whispered back.
She pulled Orm into her, into her lap, into her chest, like she was gathering all the scattered pieces of her life and arranging them where they belonged.
Orm fit there like she always had… heartbreak and all.
Behind Orm’s shoulder, Ling’s eyes flicked to a page.
I want to disappear into silence. Into air. Into nothing.
She remembered writing that line with shaking hands, staring at the ceiling, wondering if there would ever be a day when her chest didn’t feel like it was caving in.
Now that sentence lived under Orm’s thumb.
Ling closed her eyes.
“It was bad,” she admitted quietly, because Orm deserved the truth, not pity.
“It was the worst thing I have ever lived through. I won’t pretend it wasn’t.”
Orm shuddered against her. Ling tightened her grip.
“But you are not the villain in those pages,” Ling went on.
“You are the reason I made it out of them.”
Orm let out a broken sound that wasn’t quite a sob, wasn’t quite a laugh.
“How…” she whispered.
“How can you say that… after reading all of that… after living all of that…”
Ling smiled then, small and aching, a bend of her mouth that belonged only to Orm.
“Because every time I thought I couldn’t survive another day without you…” she murmured, “I still woke up. I still went to work. I still came home. I still picked up that pen and wrote your name instead of forgetting it.”
She tilted Orm’s chin up, making her look at her.
“That was love,” Ling said.
“Ugly… desperate… messy… yes. But love. Mine for you. It never died. It just hurt.”
Orm’s eyes flooded again.
“And yours…” Ling’s voice softened even further.
“I know now that your love didn’t die either. Oct told me what you were like in LA. I have seen how your hands still shake when you think about that time. You suffered too, baby.”
Orm squeezed her eyes shut, tears spilling anyway.
Ling kissed one, tasting salt.
“So yes,” she said, “we ached. We broke. We forgot how to be alive for a while. We hurt each other without meaning to. We drowned in different cities, at different times, for the same stupid beautiful reason.”
She brushed a strand of hair from Orm’s wet cheek.
“But look at us,” Ling whispered.
“Just look.”
Orm tried. Ling helped her.
“We are here,” Ling said.
“In the same room. The same home. On the same floor. Breathing the same air. My heart is beating against your cheek. Your tears are on my skin. My journals… all that pain… they led me right back to you.”
She let out a soft, shaky laugh.
“Kind of rude of them, honestly…”
Orm made a broken sound that might have been the start of a laugh if it weren’t strangled by crying.
Ling smiled for real then.
There it was.
The tiniest crack in the storm.
“I ache for us,” she admitted.
“I ache when I think about everything we lost. I ache when I read those pages and remember how bad it got. I ache when I remember you crying in another city , and me crying here, and how easily we could have missed each other forever.”
She pressed a kiss to Orm’s forehead, soft and lingering.
“But I would still choose this love,” she whispered into her skin.
“Every time. In every universe. Even knowing exactly how much it would hurt.”
Orm clutched her tighter, shoulders shaking.
Ling rocked her gently, fingers sliding through her hair.
“That ache…” Ling said, voice quiet but certain, “is the tax the universe charges for something this big. This real. This ours. And I will pay it for the rest of my life if it means I get to come home and find you here. Even if you are crying on the floor with my depressing teenage-canon era in your lap.”
That dragged a wet, quiet huff of laughter out of Orm.
Ling smiled against her temple.
“Good…” she murmured.
“There she is. My girl.”
She pulled back just enough to see Orm’s face again. Red, blotchy, perfect.
“I can’t promise it won’t hurt again.”
She was honest, because she refused to lie to her now.
“We will remember things. We will trip over old ghosts. We will read things we wish we hadn’t written.”
Her thumb traced the corner of Orm’s mouth.
“But I can promise you this…” Ling said softly.
“I will be here every single time it hurts. I will hold you every single time it feels like too much. We will ache together. And it will still be worth it.”
Orm’s voice came out wrecked, tiny.
“Even after everything?”
Ling’s answer was immediate.
“Especially after everything.”
She leaned in and kissed her then… slow… steady… with the kind of care that said I know what it cost us to get here.
Around them, the journals lay open, telling the story of how love almost broke them.
But here, in Ling’s arms, with Orm’s fingers curled into her shirt and their foreheads touching, the ending was different than Ling once believed it would be.
They had a life.
They had a home.
They had each other.
It hurt.
God, it hurt.
But it was still the only thing Ling would ever choose.
Their breaths had steadied, barely.
Orm was still curled in Ling’s lap, her fingers knotted in the fabric of Ling’s shirt like she was afraid Ling might vanish if she let go.
Ling’s hand moved slowly over her back... slow circles... grounding... patient in that devastating way she always was with Orm.
All the journals lay sprawled around them.
Paper bones.
Ghosts.
Years of pain resurrected in ink.
Orm lifted her head slightly, her voice hoarse and small.
“Ling...”
She swallowed, eyes red and raw.
“You wrote a lot about... the ring.”
Ling’s body went still beneath her.
Not stiff.
Not scared.
Just... undone.
Orm wiped the corner of her eye with her thumb, voice trembling.
“Do you... still have it...?”
Silence.
Then,
Ling nodded once.
“Yes…” she said quietly.
“Of course I do.”
Orm blinked. Something in her chest cracked.
“You kept it…” she whispered.
Ling met her eyes. Her expression was soft... steady... painfully sincere.
“I bought that ring because I knew I wanted forever with you,” Ling said.
“I wasn’t going to throw that away. Not even when everything hurt.”
Orm’s lips parted.
A quiet, broken breath escaped her.
She lowered her gaze for a moment... then lifted it again, almost shy, almost trembling.
“I have one too…”
Ling froze so completely she forgot to inhale.
“…what?” she whispered.
Orm nodded, tears spilling down again, but this time not from grief , from the weight of something truer.
“I bought mine 2 months before graduation…” she said softly.
“My ring. Your ring. I wanted to do it sometime after graduation… I wanted your divorce to be final… I didn’t want to propose to you while everything was messy and dangerous and hidden. I wanted us to be clean. Public. Real. I wanted us to be free.”
Ling stared at her like the ground had been pulled from under her.
Orm continued, voice trembling with memory.
“I would have proposed to you six months after graduation… two years ago… if they hadn’t taken everything away from us.”
Ling’s breath stuttered , actually stuttered , for the first time in years.
“Orm…” she whispered, hand tightening on Orm’s waist.
“Baby… you were going to propose to me…?”
Orm nodded.
“I had the best plan,” she said softly.
“And the playlist. And I was preparing my speech. I was going to ask you to marry me as soon as you were free.”
Ling inhaled sharply, shaking her head in disbelief.
“I…”
Her voice broke.
“Orm… I bought the ring 6 months before your finals.”
Orm’s eyes widened.
“huh?”
Ling laughed a little, the softest, most devastated laugh.
“I bought it because I knew I wanted to propose six months to a year after your graduation. I wanted you to finish your bar exam. Start your job. Settle into your career. I didn’t want you to marry me because we were in love... I wanted you to marry me because you were ready.”
Orm’s eyes went huge.
“Ling…” she whispered.
Ling nodded, smiling through the ache.
“We were both planning to propose at the same time,” she murmured.
“And neither of us knew.”
They stared at each other , a moment thick with wasted years, stolen futures, and the fragile, stupid, beautiful truth that they had always been heading toward the same ending.
Orm blinked, then narrowed her eyes.
“so who proposes now?”
Ling’s head jerked up.
“What?”
Orm sat up straighter, wiping her face aggressively with her sleeve.
“No, seriously,” she said, slipping fully into unhinged Orm mode.
“Who proposes now. Because I’m not letting you steal my moment again.”
“Steal?” Ling blinked.
“Absurd. I was going to propose first.”
“No. You weren’t.”
“I was.”
“You absolutely weren’t.”
Ling’s eyebrows lifted.
“I have an eight-year lead in adulthood. I should propose.”
“Age doesn’t give you proposal rights!”
“It absolutely does.”
“It ABSOLUTELY DOES NOT.”
Ling lifted her chin, a stubborn spark in her eyes.
“Orm Sethratanapong,” she said slowly, “I bought my ring way before you did. You bought yours in April. That means…”
“NO.” Orm pointed at her dramatically.
“That means NOTHING. Nothing. Because I had a PLAN.”
“So did I!”
“My plan had a playlist!”
“My plan had a speech!”
“My speech was better!”
“You haven’t heard mine!”
“I don’t need to! Mine was perfect!”
Ling stared.
Orm stared back.
Then Ling muttered softly under her breath…
“I’m proposing.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“Ling.”
“Orm.”
They glared at each other like two people deeply in love and deeply determined to win.
Ling leaned in, her forehead pressing against Orm’s, voice low, soft, deadly serious in the most ridiculous way imaginable.
“I am proposing.”
Orm whispered back, equally stubborn:
“I will physically throw you into a river.”
Ling smiled.
“Baby… you’re five-foot-nothing. You can’t throw me anywhere.”
“I AM TALLER THAN YOU.”
Ling laughed, actually laughed… her eyes wet and soft and whipped beyond salvation.
“You are unbelievable,” she whispered.
“You’re whipped,” Orm shot back.
Ling cupped her jaw.
“And you’re mine,” she whispered.
“So I’m proposing.”
Orm’s breath caught.
She whispered:
“we’ll see about that.”
Ling kissed her then soft, grounding, full of that quiet, unshakeable devotion that had survived blackmail, heartbreak, and two years of death in slow motion.
Between the kiss, the tears, and the stupid bickering, one truth settled warm and final between them:
They had both chosen forever.
Long before they ever said it out loud.