An Autumn Love Letter
🍂
”Autumn arrived halfway,
Golden leaves fell halfway.
Just you and I alone,
Is it love or is it friendship?”
That was the postscript in a letter with a provincial gifted schoolgirl's postage stamp from the old days. Back then, few people knew what @ or email was, so each letter made both the sender and the receiver feel immensely cherished and excited.
It so happened that after my pedagogical internship, I occasionally received a few letters from students. Each time, we would correspond back and forth, confiding stories about teachers, schools, and friends. Every letter sent and every letter received was filled with so much emotion.
One envelope had this written on the outside:
“The letter takes flight in the morning,
A reply is awaited in the evening,” which brought the recipient a feeling of melancholy and anticipation.
And on one occasion, for some reason, a few letters from students intended for me ended up in the hands of a gifted high school student from the province. This girl, out of curiosity and interest, opened, read those letters, and then resealed the envelopes to send them to me.
The next letter I received was precisely from this gifted schoolgirl. In the letter, she wrote and commented on what she had read in the letters from my students. And at the end of the letter was a sincere apology to me, along with her Yahoo ID and an untitled poem:
”Autumn arrived halfway,
Golden leaves fell halfway.
Just you and I alone,
Is it love or is it friendship?”
The next time was on Yahoo Chat. She told me she had received another letter from a student intended for me, but that it had inadvertently passed through her hands again. She intended not to send it to me because I had previously lectured and teased her. I became even more angry and spoke harshly to her. In my mind, I was certain she wouldn't return the letter to me anymore.
But then, the very next evening, as I was sitting in the dormitory courtyard hanging out with friends, a girl suddenly appeared, her face frowning. She thrust the letter into my hand and turned around and left before I could say a word…
Holding the letter, I remembered that this was the one she had mentioned. Looking at the envelope, it had this couplet written on it:
”If we are fated, we can meet even when a thousand miles apart
If we are not fated, we won't meet even face to face”
Since that day, I have never met that girl again. All that was most poetic is now just a beautiful memory entrusted to the moon. Even separated by ten thousand miles, if there is destiny, we can still meet. But if there is no destiny, even standing right in front of each other is considered a thousand-mile separation.
P.S.: Now I understand that we were not fated after all.
