Some Say Love

Some Say Love

Allen X

1

After years I may still be able to recall him. He's not dead, not lost, but we'll never meet again----in theory.

Three years ago I moved here the second year after my father's dying of cancer. I didn't clearly know how that cancer destroyed father's body, for I was in college, in another country far from my home. I was not shocked when receiving the message of the death. I did not go to the funeral even. Mother told me it was a sunny day in Spalding when my father was buried. She cried, choked by tears, trying to calm her shaking voice, 'Your father's not dead. Remember him. There's not gonna be a second person who loves you better than he does.'
It's fact that there has been no one died ever, like a dust always existing in the world. 'We' are not lives. 'We' are logic, mind, self-consciousness, which was born from coincidences. Dying is a door behind which 'we' find freedom, through which 'we' escape our broken shell where 'we' lived once. Things never disappear, I'm convinced.
In Spalding the day I moved here was also sunny, told by mother. But it was raining in Shanghai here, people wearing dark clothes walking on streets. Buildings seemed so high that they almost reached the sky, the sky with grey clouds.
It was not my first time to come to China. I had known China since the age of four when father taught me the word 'china' and the country China. I spent one year of my college time as an exchange student in Shanghai, where, I got to know another culture and met new people.

When my mind was made up mother did not want me to leave. I loved my hometown and my family truly, but I had to leave. The reason I told mother was that, 'I need to have my own life and work myself, mama, you know I've already grown up.' It was a useful comforting sentence.
She nodded, 'I want to set your wings free of course, but I'm just gonna miss you. Remember your father and me, as well as Phill.'
I kissed her cheeks and smiled to my stepfather Philip Winterson who came from France and spoke English in a French accent.
'Au revoir,' I spoke French to Philip, as my acceptance to him. He promised to take good care of mother, and so there was no reason for us to be enemies.

I still remember those days. The day I arrived in Shanghai, I saw him waiting for me at the airport when I tried to ask the officer for some guidance. He might be taller than before. Holding an umbrella and sitting on the waiting bench, he was checking his phone.
He smiled at me and sparkled his eyes. His Asian face, still sharply shaped. 'Welcome, British fella! You seem tired.'
'Yeah tired really,' I said. When I was on plane there were lots of words ready to come out of my throat but once seeing him they just somehow passed away, leaving my tongue and thoughts in a mess.
We walked silently in the rain under an umbrella.
We walked silently under an umbrella as the rain poured down and water flooded across the street. We were not shy but just took each other for granted I thought. Dylan and I were old friends. We didn't take a taxi but just walked. When reaching his home he finally started talking with me.

'I'm sorry for... '
'My dad. '
'Hey... '
'It's OK, Dylan, I've made it to adapt new life. '
'You are tired now,' he held my shoulders, awkwardly burying my head in his chest, his hands caressing my hair. At that time I seemed to be lost. I didn't know what to do. I felt myself being filled.
'Jacob. ' He kissed me that day, in a gentle way, robbing my strength. I felt myself being filled.