"...to dance with you till we're both dead."

prelude - scars: a sealed letter of things to know

One.

This is not a love letter. This is not the letter one sends to another when they're breaking like a glass vase, fraying like electricity, heart thundering in throat like an explosion of low thunder when your eyes meet mine, light speed, nuclear fission, no, this is not, one of those things.

Two.

If I remove all the scars on my skin it will crumble like an empty ash facade.

Three.

But you'd never been to those places. Those places where they unwind you like a toy puppet, tear your flesh like vultures. Knives they jab into every empty space, every line unwritten, every cup unfilled. Not pain, not fury, just numbness. If you know this, you'd know that they leave no gaps, and you'd know it's impossible for me to remain

unscathed.

Four.

When your hands tremble unsteadily as they graze me, when my reflection muddies in your glazed eyes' dark pools. When you throw yourself against the walls to thicken them from what is outside, I can tell.

Five.

I can tell that you love me.

Six.

You close my eyelids at midnight.

Seven.

I don't wake until seven years later. Seven years of holding and healing and taking out the knives. Seven years of laughing and crying and finding our way through the crowd. Seven years since we met, that is when at last I admit the truth of what I write. I write love letters.

Love,

Zhou Zishu