2025 Betty L. Yu and Jin C. Yu Creative Writing Prize – Finalist, High School Category
Remember when you traced your fingers down my spine? The touch was feather-light and I was embarrassed by the rotten violence of my craving, you cradled me that night like I was a baby. We’d kicked the blankets to the floor—Taipei is too humid and the fan wasn’t working—but you refused me their luxury even as I sweltered. I would say that you preferred me vulnerable, but that would be petulant and untrue: I never knew how to be less of an open flesh wound around you. I was wicked Eve without the fig leaves, so I guess that made you the snake, but you felt like God, even now, even now.
The only respite you could provide for the heat came in the form of a command: 好了, 好了. Be well, already. 好, meaning good, is one of the only characters I can read. On the left is the word for woman, 女 (you can tell from her elegantly crossed legs). Beside her, a man, 子. Male and female, side by side. There is no character for us, not one woman but two. I told you that years of absence had eroded my Mandarin-speaking abilities, but nothing could stop your string of conversation. You didn’t care that those words would always sound garbled to me. You let the rough undertones of your distinct accent, its odd slang, speak for itself. You kissed the back of my neck, clumsy, and smiled. I studied your grins for a translation.
Your room was as uncomfortable as it was familiar. The mattress was too big for a place this size. I couldn’t scoot around the space without bumping against the bed. Accessing my suitcase was near impossible. At least the windows were large, but that wasn’t an advantage in the heart of this bustling city. The curtains were pulled shut to block out the miasma of flashing red-and-yellow lights that pierced the sky, its wavy paths along the floor like sunlight through a glass of water. The MRT track ran parallel to your apartment, you’d said the grating noise was the only thing that made the place affordable. In the morning, I would wave to its passengers, though the train was so fast that I doubt they saw my tentative smiles. At one am, it was too late for the streets to be filled with human noise, but a group of friends walked below us and one of them shouted something in joy. You repeated it for me to hear, but I couldn’t understand it then, either.
You blindly reached over my silent form until our hands intertwined.
The next morning, on a scooter I wasn’t sure you could drive, you took me to breakfast. You gave me your only helmet. The fact that you didn’t have two made me think you didn’t get many passengers, and that grossly satisfied my jealousy. I was running on four hours of sleep. You woke me up at the crack of dawn, all but slapped me awake as I cried protests. You didn’t care for soft mornings, I’d be surprised if you changed. That’s my problem with you, I think. You are deceptively gentle. Are, present tense, and it’s so evil. I return with the mosquitoes every summer and you let me pretend that this time it’ll be forever. You think the pretense does me a service.
I was pissed until the first bite of 油条. Golden skin cracked between my lips, the closest to ambrosia outside of Mount Olympus; you poured nectar down my throat but informed me it was just warm soy milk, the kind with the skin on top. The breakfast joint, literally hole-in-the-wall, was sprinkled with tables. It was mostly occupied by old men in wife-beaters and half-blind grandmothers, each nursing a tattered newspaper. You watched me eat.
“You’re leaving today,” you said, a statement. You asked fewer questions than you raised.
I was caught off-guard. I had thought we were playing a game of pretend, one where we didn’t confront our separation until you dropped me off at the Songshan Airport. I choked on the soymilk, and you wordlessly handed me a napkin as a response. Eyes looking into mine, seeking. “Um, yeah. Flight leaves in twelve hours.” I attempted a smile. “Want to visit that cute café I found before you drop me off?”
You shook your head. “You’re not even packed yet.”
“What, so eager to get rid of me?” I joked. You looked away. “Come on, don’t be like that. I have, like, two-thirds of my second suitcase done. Let’s just see where the day takes us.”
The lack of response was unsurprising. You hate talking about anything serious. Even today, you still refuse to label our relationship. I grew up with you, now you’re my summer fling. On the summery June afternoon when I arrived that trip, you threw your arms around me. By the end of the night, I smelled entirely of you. That’s how you love me: present-tense, with a fierce possessiveness that only lasted the time we spent together. As soon as I was gearing to leave, you pushed me away, like that would make it hurt less. It never hurts less.
I reached for your hand. Sorry, it said. You threw away my trash. I’d already forgiven you.
We went home and I put everything away. My travel blow-dryer, a tube of sunscreen, I replaced the ratty t-shirt I had slept in the night before with something layered, something I could easily peel off if the AC wasn’t strong enough in the airplane. I threw in the rest of the trinkets that didn’t fit anywhere—a magnet I’d purchased at some museum, the sesame crackers I couldn’t find back home. Mangos, I stuffed in between bras in a half-hearted attempt to trick Customs. You helped, like you’d promised, but you wouldn’t look at me. You were rarely uncomfortable that it unnerved me. Right now, in this space where we were both waiting, was limbo of the worst kind. I hoped you would get the words out of your mouth, I was ready to wrench them from their hiding place by stuffing my tanned fist down your throat and manually pumping that rotten muscle of a heart. Your thin lips remained closed.
It was only late morning when we finished, Helios inching forward above our black heads, so you took me grocery shopping. We boarded the scooter again. I wrapped my hands around your waist and winced every time you changed lanes without looking. Sweat trailed from the tendrils of short hair above your nape down past your collar, the helmet the only thing keeping me from following it with my tongue.
The open-air market smelled like raw meat. Down a few tables from the entrance, an auntie raised a butcher knife above her head and brought it down against the neck of an orange hen. I looked with intrigue at the blood pooling on her cutting board and wondered if she would taste better braised with soy sauce or chilled in white wine. You covered my eyes, mistaking my interest for disgust, a feeling that doesn’t register when I’m with you. You hopped off your seat and wheeled me around each stall like it was a stroller. A woman handing you a plastic bag of crab apples said something in Taiwanese with a raised eyebrow and your surprised laughter bubbled out in response.
“What did she say?” I asked.
“She asked if you were mine,” you said. I liked seeing your dimples, but I still don’t understand why you’d laughed.
You let me make lunch with you, even though you hated having anyone in the kitchen while you were cooking. I sliced the carrots with a careful reverence as if you would inspect them after, making sure each orange strip was thin and uniform. I took out a cucumber and gave it the same treatment while you shredded chicken. You pulled out the noodles you had already chilled in the fridge the night before. We poured a spicy-sweet peanut sauce and used a pair of big chopsticks to mix the toppings together. 涼麵 at its finest. We fed from the same big bowl like pigs in a trough. I grabbed your chin to kiss the dressing off your lips. You liked that, and I was glad.
Too soon after, my Uber arrived. You held my hand on the way there. I listened to your conversation with the driver in that exuberant good-kid tone I hated, forcing your voice into a version of femininity that never harmonized with those cropped seaweed-dark curls and gym shorts. I had to remind myself not to be hurt. This is a dance in which I’m well trained–You always avoided talking to me around this time. So there you were, filling any lull of silence with another question about the driver’s family, and there I was, nauseous each time you ran a finger down my knuckles.
The building itself was oppressive. Flat and rectangular, walls a shade of gray that refused to make sense. A family emerged from the sliding-glass doors, the dad’s glasses were foggy from the sweat that permeated his T-shirt, but he let his daughter remain atop his shoulders. She was craning her head backwards, shouting something in English: Mom mom mom mom mom. Then Mom-mom-mom-mom-mom came out with a heavy backpack, too tired to be annoyed, too loving to be angry. I watched that scene while you got my suitcases out of the car, and they had left before you finished.
Goodbye. “Thank you,” I said instead.
You nodded, hands in your pockets now. “不謝, 不謝.”
There wouldn’t be a better farewell. I stood passively with my hand around a suitcase handle as your strong arms enveloped me. You smelled good, like gasoline and shampoo and what we had for lunch. You’d pointed out once that the dips of the human body are perfectly designed to
hold another–head against collarbone, hands around a waist, legs slotted between each other like matches. I remember how well we fit together. You tell me God is angry. He must be, to banish me from Eden. Biting the apple was never a choice, understand that. Our perfect sin was written in the stars.
“I love you,” I admitted, the wrong thing to say and yet I couldn’t bear omitting. You replied like you always do: “Stay.”
“I’ll be back,” I offered, but that was the wrong thing too.
Here’s what I should have said: I’ll be back. I’ll be back, and I’ll scream your name while I’m away. I will write you love letters and daydream about the rain pelting against our heads and the patterns that your wet hair made stuck against the shower wall. I will leave, and I will memorize the way you savor the pebble-smooth syllables of my Chinese name in your wonderful mouth. Because you don’t mean it. I know you don’t mean it, so I will miss you with an intensity so bright it’s annoying.
But I slipped out of your embrace and left. I love you as much as I love leaving you. Because you are the clear sky and the violent heat, the skyscrapers, its green windows. You are each uneven brick and every friendly voice. My teeth break the skin of a juicy guava and it tastes like you, I peel a tea egg and its shell resembles your spotted skin. You are the mountains, sprawling everywhere despite the selfishness of humankind, and you are the shamrocks peeking through the cobblestones around my grandfather’s grave. You make your stubborn presence known, but our joy together is doomed to be fleeting.
Please make room for me, the next time I return. Allow this ephemeral process to repeat—the heartache, the passion, the sadness, the leaving. I’ll do it again.
Charis Chu will be a senior at Chino Hills High School this fall and the president of the Taiwanese Culture Club. She has been besotted with the art of writing ever since she fell in love with literature. When Charis isn’t daydreaming about frolicking in the Irish countryside, you can find her curled up with a Daniel Handler novel or covering her eyelids with garish colors. She is on Instagram @lerlerchu, her club is @chhstaiwanesecultureclub.
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