A ticket bought out of curiosity, prompted by a fleeting conversation last year with an acquaintance about wanting to see this play. I never made it. This time, I went and watched it to the end. It was worth it.

What does love look like? I believe everyone has their own answer. What is mine? Plainness, joy, passion, happiness, quarrels, anger, compromise, submission, building together.

These are the words that shape my current imagination of love. I have never been in a relationship, so I have no first‑hand experience. These are simply the shades I suspect love might hold.

Watching Malu try so desperately to show himself to Mingming, only to be met with her utter indifference—a spontaneous sadness welled up from my heart. The saddest thing in the world, perhaps, is loving a woman who does not love you back.

When Malu poured out everything he had before Mingming, and she still refused, still loved another man, I felt a kind of dread: What if one day I meet a woman to whom I would willingly give all that I am, yet her heart belongs to someone else?

This is only a specter of the imagination. I hope I am lucky enough to meet someone whom I love, and who loves me in return.

Songs that moved me during the performance

Rhinoceros in Love

The birds have all flown south

I am not a bird, I have no need for the south

The leaves all turn to face the sun

I am not a leaf, I have no need for sunlight

How lonely I am, how brave I am

I am a rhinoceros sick with longing

How lonely I am, how brave I am

I am a rhinoceros in love

The train has pulled into the platform

I am not a train, I need no terminus

The rain has soaked through my clothes

I am not the rain, I need not stay up in the sky

I am a rhinoceros in love

To love without being loved in return, yet to call oneself "in love"—nothing but a brave face over a broken smile.

Oxygen — Mingming's Song

Smile at me, smile

As if we were meeting for the first time

Speak to me, speak

Even if the vows will change by tomorrow

Enjoy me now

Life drifts so weightlessly

Remember me in the years to come

In the year you grow old

The years gone by will surely pass

With you, my final love

The years gone by will surely pass

With you, beside me at last

All the light rushes toward me

All the oxygen is breathed in by me

All objects lose their weight

I have nearly reached the end of every road

When Mingming sang this song, a shiver ran through me.

A Poem for You — Malu's Song

Everything white, when it meets you,

Turns to black ink drained of light

Every bird and beast despairs at being unable to speak your name

Every intersection lights up green so you may pass freely

Every compass needle points out your direction for me

You are the wind that leaves no trace

You are the wind that brushes gently past the body

You are the wind that leaves no trail

You are the wind that is everywhere and at all times

My love, my love,

My love, my love,

My love, my love,

You are my warm gloves,

The ice‑cold beer,

The shirt that carries the scent of sunlight,

My day‑after‑day dream

You are pure, innocent, glass‑like,

You are pure, innocent, water‑like,

You are pure, innocent, and nothing can change that

Sunlight passes through you

And alters its own course

On the way home, listening to this song, I wept in silence, letting the tears trace down my cheeks.

Ah, Mingming, Mingming. Beloved one, how can you be so merciless? How can you let a heart that loves you slowly grow cold?

Ah, Malu, Malu. Pitiable man, the taste of unrequited love—how it aches, how it aches.