Lament at Changmen Palace

| Twelve |

—

Later, a great fire broke out within Changmen Palace. The blazing fire burned for an entire day.

The luxurious golden palace which was once so resplendent was reduced to ashes within a night.

I stood there and laughed. Laughed until the tears fell from my eyes.

What the fire destroyed was a love that everyone had envied. An empty love, built on gold.

Many people gathered around the ruins of Changmen Palace. They cried. I saw my mother amongst them, her eyes stricken with anguish.

In the years that have passed, the arrogance within her had long been smothered by you, and she had been reduced to a frail woman.

My mother clung onto your sleeves, the way any mother would have, crying as she pleaded for death to release its hold on me.

She said, return my daughter to me.

My beautiful, clever, obedient daughter.

That day, you were not angered.

Even as my mother forgot her status and pulled at your robes in her grief, you were not angered.

Because you were as grief-stricken as she was. You fell to your knees on the grounds outside the ruins of Changmen Palace.

Wei Zifu said, Your Majesty, don’t be sad.

She patted you on the back.

You pushed her away even as you continued to spiral down the depths of sorrow and unbearable solitude, murmuring feverishly to yourself.

You said that you had let Ah Jiao down —

That within this vast palace, the only person who truly understood you was only Ah Jiao.

That all the other women loved you the way they loved an Emperor, but Ah Jiao was the only one who loved you the way she loved her husband.

You said, of course you understood. How could you not have?

But you were the Emperor, and an Emperor was forbidden from loving.

Love was a weakness no Emperor should have.

You said, if there were truly a second life, to let the both of us be reborn as common people, away from the power struggles of the imperial palace.

In the end, you did not allow them to close my coffin.

With the grandeur befitting an Empress, you held my funeral.

For a long time afterwards, you remained inconsolable. Like a lost child, you stared at the ruins of Changmen Palace.

You made Simia Xiangru repeat The Ode of Changmen over and over to you.

You said that you had only deserted me, treated me so coldly then, because you wanted to subdue my prideful self. You said that I was too cold and aloof. That I had never once bowed down to you.

That you only wanted to change me.

Wei Zifu’s existence was your attempt in subduing me. If I had learned to acquiesce with your wishes, you would never have brought Wei Zifu back to the palace.

You said Wei Zifu was me —

A substitute compliant to your every wish.

***

You knelt, covering your face with your hands.

You seemed to have heard my voice, lingering with sorrow. You turned your head to look, your eyes searching, but you could not see me.

As the birds sang and the flowers bloomed, a butterfly fluttered in the skies, gently falling.

You never knew that I once flew by your side.

That I stopped by your shoulders, blowing your tears away.

The breeze, light and gentle.

Then, I was only a small butterfly, using the entirety of my life to let you remember a woman named Chen Jiao.