A Dialogue with Myself

Wanchen Cao

Wanchen Cao is a Chinese poet and writer whose work explores memory, dreams and selfhood. She holds an MA in Creative Writing from the University of Southampton and is a PhD researcher in Creative Writing at the University of Dundee. She is the author of Seven O’Clock (2018).

I have begun, of all things, to pity myself. The loneliness and desolation I dismiss as banal have surfaced again. I tied the weak little girl in a corner of my heart. She is still there, crying.

Even a trite song can bring her to tears. I despise her frailty. I thought that if I took her place, nothing could hurt me too deeply. Expect no happiness, refuse to believe anyone is worth loving, and I would be invulnerable.

But whenever I am not reading or thinking, whenever night falls, she slips out of her corner and takes possession of my heart. Buildings, the night sky, the evening breeze all turn into fine needles. She even says, ‘You are me.’

How could I be her? That person forever crying, begging people not to leave. How can someone so afraid of loneliness become a real writer? I scorn her writing: no philosophy, no history, no literary feeling, just the same grief told over and over, as though the whole world owed her something.

Yet she remains so young, while I grow old. I cannot kill her. In my empty world, she is the only person left. Let me at least keep someone to mock.

I

‘Don’t touch me!’

‘Are you in pain? You’re trembling,’ she asks. I loathe the cheap pity in her voice.

‘I’m not in pain. I’m just cold.’

‘Of course you’re cold. Such a vast world, and you’re the only one living in it. Come and hide in the corner with me.’

II

‘Why do you keep crying?’

‘I’m crying for you.’

‘Ridiculous. I’m far stronger than you!’

‘But you don’t even dare to cry.’

III

‘Don’t think you can trick a single tear out of me.’

‘I have never lied to you.’

‘You say I’m you. Isn’t that a lie?’

‘But whenever you dream, you curl up in a corner and cry too. In our dreams, what difference is there between us?’

IV

‘All right, I admit you’re me. But you’re the part of me that has failed most completely.’

‘You’re a part of me. I brought you into being.’

‘Ha! A crybaby like you brought me into being?’

‘You formed out of my tears. That’s why every word you speak, every look in your eyes, is crying.’

V

‘Leave me alone. You make me miserable.’

‘I can’t go. If I leave, you’ll die.’

‘How could I? I’d be better off without you.’

‘While I’m here, you can hate me. When I’m gone, you’ll have only yourself left to loathe.’

VI

‘If you stop crying, we can be friends.’

‘That’s the most hypocritical lie I’ve ever heard.’

‘But isn’t it what you most want to hear?’

She lowers her head and is silent for a long time.

‘Yes. Given another chance, I’d fall for it again.’

VII

‘You’re such a fool. After being deceived so many times, you still want to believe.’

‘Someone always gets a little pleasure from hurting or deceiving me. If someone were sincere with me, I wouldn’t know what to do.’

‘Because you’re a hopelessly pessimistic coward.’

‘Because I’ve learned only how to endure deceit, not how to accept someone’s sincerity.’

VIII

‘Do you love me?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why? I bully you. I’m so cruel and heartless to you.’

‘You bully me because you panic, because you’re afraid. I love you because I understand you so well. I understand why you panic, why you’re afraid.’

IX

‘I think he dislikes me. I don’t know how to please him.’

‘He’s only afraid. It isn’t dislike.’

‘Afraid of me?’

‘You try so hard to hide your weakness and helplessness that you seem not to care about anything. And you love so fiercely that your love seems overwhelming. Indifference and intensity are tangled together. He can’t tell which one is you.’

X

‘I’m just a worthless thing, like you.’

‘A worthless thing can’t create another worthless thing. It can only slowly rot. You call me useless, yet another you has grown out of me. At least we’re still changing.’

‘Then what are we?’

‘We are nothing, and we can be anything. If we can let go of everything, we are destined to gain everything.’

11 December 2018

Wanchen Cao is a Chinese poet and writer and the author of Seven O’Clock (2018). She holds an MA in Creative Writing from the University of Southampton and is a PhD researcher in Creative Writing at the University of Dundee. Her writing explores memory, dreams and selfhood.