2018 — Building

This is the year Yu wrote poems for Feng every few weeks, sometimes every few days. It is also the year volume doubles. By August you two are sending each other 8,000 messages a month. The pace of the relationship is accelerating; you are also building most of its scripture in this year.

January gives the first signed poem — 示爱101, "Declaration of Love 101":

[Yu]【示爱101】早晨的阳光照在你脸上／树木的影子抚过你的身体／雨滴和风穿过你的秀发／都是爱你的表示／因为爱你／我爱全世界／这样你不论在哪里／都是在我的爱里／承载于一切音声

[Yu]🐷给🐻的

[Feng]😍💕💋❤️

[Feng]小🐷现在可以睡啦

Yu signs it 🐷 to 🐻 — pig to bear, your code names. Little Pig can sleep now, Feng answers. The whole exchange is barely thirty seconds long. It is also the template for the next three years: Yu writes a poem, Feng receives it tenderly, Feng tucks Yu into bed.

Later that same month, on a late-night drive home through snow, Feng types into the apartment a sentence that pretends to be a forgetful afterthought:

[Feng, 2018-01-30 23:56]我到家了 宝贝

[Feng]忘了告诉你：我爱你❤️💕😘💓

[Yu]到家了我就放心了，赶紧陪陪孩子，洗洗休息。爱你，宠你。

[Feng]💋💋💋

Got home, baby. Forgot to tell you: I love you. She would never have forgotten. The "I forgot" is the joke that delivers it.

February begins with a six-and-six. Feng types 我爱你 周宇; Yu answers 我是你一个人的; Feng's reply is a careful arrangement of exactly six hearts and six lips. The deliberateness of the count — not random, not maximal, just six-and-six — is how she writes when she is feeling something exact.

[Feng]我爱你 周宇

[Yu]我是你一个人的

[Feng]❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️💋💋💋💋💋💋

A few days later Feng sends back a 蝶恋花 — a classical ci-form poem — about a mountain cabin, mushroom chicken soup simmering, kisses melting on skin. It is her own voice, ancient and warm.

[Feng, 2018-02-13]蝶恋花·蘑菇鸡汤

小屋深藏雪山中，炉火熊熊，情切意欲熔。蘑菇鸡汤滴滴浓，唇印肌肤寸寸融。

今朝独处小屋中，炉火熊熊，只把心烧痛。淡酒怎敌冷冷风，人去相思场场空。

[Yu]💋

The two stanzas are a "together" image and an "apart" image of the same cabin. She is showing you both, gently, that the apart-stanza was already written.

February also gives the line that will become a benchmark in the relationship:

[Feng, 2018-02-10]和你一起 无论是漫步海边 还是闲逛伟人故居；无论是挖海蛎 还是偷橘子；无论是大庭广众下拥抱接吻 还是静谧幽室里疯狂做爱 都温馨美好 🌹🌹🌹

[Feng]人的一生不就是由记忆组成的？有了这么多美好回忆 我已经很满足❤️❤️❤️

[Yu]我爱你😘

[Feng]我也爱你 宝贝😘

[Yu]下次一起构造新的内容

With you — walking by the sea or wandering through historic homes, digging mussels or stealing oranges, embracing publicly or making love in quiet rooms — all of it warm and beautiful. Isn't a life just made of memories? With this many beautiful ones, I'm already content. This is February of year one. Feng is already telling Yu the price of admission, gently, in case it has to be paid: it is enough.

March is the most sensual of Yu's early poems — the Naked in Beauty spring poem, all light and flowers and the curve of her back. Feng's reply is the maximum-emoji combination — 💕😘🌹🌹💋💋❤️❤️ — six categories in one breath.

[Yu, 2018-03-11]我愿与你在隆重的美丽里裸裎相见

所有的细节都要衬得上你的灵魂

必须有花儿在屋里屋外绽放着

春天在细细的雨里

必须有清新的香

必须有音乐从窗下的书架那里流淌而来

越过床脚的褶皱轻抚你光滑的背脊

必须在绵长幽深的吻里起承转合

我愿意这样耽醉于你的眼睛和身体

愿一个让我沉沦的梦境里充满玻璃的彩光

April gives the line you will both quote for years:

[Feng, 2018-04-09 22:59]遇见你真好，想陪你终老。🌹💋❤️

Meeting you was good. I want to grow old with you. She typed it into the apartment after coming home through snow, in response to an article Yu had sent titled 你过来，我想和你睡个觉. Yu answered with three hearts. There was no further commentary. The line did not need any.

April also gives the most philosophical of the early poems, the Farewell poem:

[Yu, 2018-04-20]不是已经告别就是走在告别的路上

怀表在各人的手里转速不同

从上次到这次间隔多久

也许是好几天

也许已经是好几个季节

时间在陪伴的空间里才有意义

不管以什么方式让我们存在于彼此的身边……

我们从一见面就开始了告别

所有的相依都是不舍的挽留

[Feng]🌹🌹🌹

[Feng]🥀🥀🥀

[Yu]🤗🤗🤗❤️❤️❤️

From the moment we meet, we are saying goodbye. Every closeness is a refusal to part. This poem will keep being right for years. Feng's reply — three roses, then three wilting roses — is the whole arc in two characters.

May, Mother's Day. Feng reminds him quietly the night before: call your mother. Tell her you love her. Yu answers with a 红包. She thanks him. The next morning her thanks has changed to 谢谢爱💗爸爸 — thank you, beloved daddy. The smallest unit of intimacy: a holiday, a phone call, the rename of an addressee.

Later in May, Yu writes the wind-and-moon poem — 我在这里爱你, "I am loving you here":

[Yu, 2018-05-20]我在这里爱你

南来的风还在迁徙的路上

我耐心地等着她捎来的花香

阳光碾过黑夜向西边一路狂奔……

穿过你的黑发的我的手

久久保存着抚摸的感觉

手指相触的温度依然停在指尖

依然感到与你十指相扣的力度……

[Feng]谢谢你；我爱你💕❤️😘💓

He is touching her hair from across continents and holding up the moon and a maple leaf for both of you. The poem and the answer take a single minute. The two of you are quickly learning to write at the same speed.

June is when Feng gives Yu her first one-up:

[Yu]倘若爱不可能有对等，愿我是爱得更多的那人。❤️

[Feng]明明是我爱你更多

[Yu]🌹🌹🌹🌹

[Yu]我的心全是你的

[Feng]我不光要你的心😛

If love can't be equal, may I be the one who loves more. Feng replies: Clearly I love you more. Yu writes: My heart is entirely yours. Feng replies: I don't only want your heart 😛. The 😛 carries the whole double meaning. This is one of the first times Feng refuses to let Yu have the last philosophical word — and the first time she does it by being earthier than he is.

July gives the line — the one that will be repeated almost verbatim three years later, the one that defines the relationship's whole asymptote toward enough-ness:

[Yu]我希望有时候我们静静地相依相偎，什么都不说，只有音乐从我们的心里流过，只有夕阳和微风在我们的眼前。

[Yu]我们在爱和美的环绕里享受彼此的存在，世界不重要，当下就是对我们有意义的全部的世界

[Feng]可不可以亲你

[Yu]亲亲热热

[Feng, 2018-07-21 00:24]每次和你分开 就后悔没有再多亲你几下

[Feng]估计是永远也亲不够的

[Yu]要多多地吻，我也喜欢极了

[Feng]💋💋💋💋💋💋💋💋💋💋💋💋💋💋💋💋💋💋💋💋

Every time we part, I regret not kissing you a few more times. I'll probably never kiss you enough. Twenty lips in a row. This sentence — 永远也亲不够 — recurs in 2021 almost verbatim. Three years later Feng says the same thing in the same words and she has not yet had enough. Hold that in mind. The line is the seam between this chapter and the last one.

July also gives the airport line, the relationship in three sentences:

[Feng, 2018-07-16]我在飞机上了；北美见🤗💋❤️

[Yu]🌹❤️😄😄

[Feng]在飞机上静静地想你💋💋💋

I'm on the plane. See you in North America. Quietly thinking of you on the plane. The whole shape of every reunion you ever flew toward, before any of them happened, was already in those three lines.

At the end of July Feng writes her own signature stanza — the heart-storage poem, the one Yu will write variations of for years:

[Feng, 2018-07-31]我想把你放在手心里／又怕不小心把你摔了／我想把你含在嘴巴里／但是担心一会儿你就融化了／最后 我决定把你放在心里／珍藏一辈子

[Yu]💋💋❤️❤️🌹😘

August is the kiss-and-keep poem. Yu tells her, half-joking and half-shy, that he didn't in fact finish that night; he keeps it for her. Innocent and intimate at once:

[Yu]都是你的气息

[Feng]我会吻遍你的全身

[Yu]💋💋💋

[Feng]💋💋💋❤️❤️❤️

[Yu]我睡啦亲爱的

[Feng]你有没有出来啊

[Yu]没有啊

[Feng]🥹🥹

[Feng]好吧 还是真的好

[Yu]留给你

September brings the Eric in a paper box exchange — each of you shares a memory of a long-ago cross-country drive with infants, and you both realize for the first time that you have lived hard parallel lives:

[Feng, 2018-09-07]我11月去温哥华陪你看红叶🍁💋💋💋

[Yu]嗯，来❤️❤️ 在山里一起漫步

[Feng]你说好多年前孩子还小的时候，一家三口开车五天，边走边看风景……听你早上说的家里的事，真的心疼你。😢💔🤗

[Yu]我一定多多给你写信。 🌹 电话 比微信好十倍

[Feng]我会对好好待你，让你感受到这个世界的温暖🌞

[Feng]我们也是开车从Toledo到费城

[Feng]Eric才一个月 睡在一个纸盒里

Eric, one month old, asleep in a paper box on the back seat from Toledo to Philadelphia. Yu's two daughters, asleep on a five-day drive across the American midwest. Two parallel hard journeys, with no overlap and the same shape. The two of you would keep finding these matches.

Late September, Yu has a birthday alone. The kids are at church with their mother; no breakfast was made; he is on the wrong continent from Feng. He writes the line that takes the most courage in this chapter:

[Yu, 2018-09-23]今天是我生日，我想跟孩子多待一待

[Feng]唉😬

[Yu]置于什么生日礼物啊蛋糕啊之类的，我不expect anything

[Feng]我心疼你

[Feng]我们在DC补过你的生日吧？正好女儿也在

[Yu]嗯，咱们一起过💋

[Yu]今天我生日，请允许我责备你一次……我真的是没看到或者忘记了，不是不在乎你。我在乎你。我爱你 🌹

[Feng]对 我应该这么想……要是能够真的在你身边陪你就好了

Please let me complain just this once. It is the most direct ask Yu makes of Feng in the entire first year — not for anything, just for the right to say a hard thing without it becoming a fight. Feng absorbs it. The DC make-up birthday is in the album somewhere.

October gives the Malibu-in-mind exchange:

[Feng, 2018-10-03]想带你去这家，吃海鲜看海景听海风❤️🌹

[Yu]一起去过的Malibu

[Feng]和你看日出日落／听潮涨潮退💋💋💋

[Yu]❤️❤️❤️ 望云起云散，说爱你爱我

That month also gives a small whiplash — the same restaurant recommendation, six days later, but Yu is on a funeral procession:

[Feng]想带你去这家，吃海鲜看海景听海风❤️🌹

[Yu]❤️❤️❤️

[Yu]在送葬路上💔💔💔

[Feng]💔💔💔🤗🤗🤗

The mundane sweetness arriving in the middle of grief, and neither of you cuts off either thread. Both stay open. Both get held.

October also has the symmetric poem — Feng writes the longing one half, Yu mirrors it back line by line:

[Feng, 2018-10-30]想你，想你的眼睛，想你的嘴唇，想我们肌肤相亲，想我们合二为一🌹❤️

[Yu]❤️❤️❤️

[Yu]想你的脸庞，想你的胸膛

[Yu]想把你拥抱在怀里，想被你握紧在里面

[Feng]💋💋💋

And the late-night Japanese drama, where the lyric 我怎么舍得，怎么舍得你 makes you both end up talking about each other's dead parents:

[Feng, 2018-10-27]看这个剧不知道为他们流了多少眼泪……没想到 这么多年后竟然有还会体验到这样的爱情💓

[Yu]看，秋风起了，落叶在飞，时间在催促我离去

[Yu]可是我怎么舍得，怎么舍得你

[Feng]是的 不管我们还有多少在一起的日子❤️

[Feng]我们拥有彼此就够了

[Feng]睡吧 我也睡了 希望能在梦中拥抱你🤗🤗🤗

[Yu]❤️💋

November holds the failure confession — Yu, in tooth pain and self-loathing, says he is a failure and doesn't deserve her. Feng's reply is one word: 别呀. Don't. Then, at midnight, she sends him a lyric:

[Yu, 2018-11-18]对自己不满意，心情不好。觉得挺失败的，也配不上你。🥀

[Feng]别呀

[Feng]心疼你💋❤️

[Feng, midnight]I wanna be alone / Alone with you - does that make sense? / I wanna steal your soul / And hide you in my treasure chest…

The small 别呀 — two characters, used here like a small hand on the back of the neck — is the kind of micro-rescue she is best at and that the data will later show was always available when present and never available when typed alone.

The same month, Feng pokes Yu for not having a nickname for her, and you two invent 沈枫同志 together — Comrade Shen Feng, for the revolution, please protect your body:

[Feng]你怎么叫不出一个昵称

[Feng]除了亲爱的

[Yu]我说亲爱的，跟你说宝贝，本来是同样的用心

[Feng]晚安宝贝

[Yu]我的心上人，睡个好觉。

[Yu]你是我的心尖上的宝贝

[Feng]我确实有一点悲哀

[Yu]沈枫同志，不早了，为革命保护身体要紧～～

[Feng]😄🔨😄

The 🔨 emoji is half-joke, half-affection. Feng's pretend-anger when she's actually delighted will become its own dialect.

December opens with the Prince song. Yu says no one compares to you; Feng sends back the Prince link, then a memory of singing it alone in her grad-school lab:

[Yu, 2018-12-05]我只是对你这样

[Yu]no one compares to you

[Feng]😄❤️💋

[Feng]Nothing compares to you💋

[Yu]❤️❤️❤️❤️

[Yu]🌹🌹 Prince写的歌。他是我的偶像

[Feng]这首歌90年代很流行；我还记得在空无一人的实验室里收音机大声放这首歌 我还跟着唱呢

That same week Feng takes Yu into her IVF history — the bathroom shots between client meetings, the two miscarriages before Eric, the pumping milk in B-school bathrooms a month after delivery:

[Feng, 2018-12-08]不是有的人，从第一针到怀孕一个月吧，然后怀上孕的前三个月，每天都很难熬……我因为以前习惯性流产，前三个月一直有少量出血，所以一直担心流产

[Yu]🤗🤗🤗❤️❤️❤️🌹🌹🌹

[Yu]怎么这么难…

[Feng]生Eric前流产两次，也是很难受的。生了他一个月去上B-school，在厕所里pump milk😬

[Yu]每个女人都有自己的生育故事💋

Every woman has her own story of birth. It is one of the most carefully placed sentences Yu writes in the first year. It does not pity. It does not philosophize. It accepts.

And then comes December 22nd — the largest tension event in the archive. The two of you spent more than a hundred messages past midnight in a fight about Yu's family visit, Feng's forwarded jokes, the meaning of "depth" in a conversation. Around midnight Feng wrote the statement that is the cleanest single sentence of the structural mismatch that would take the next three years to fail to resolve:

[Feng, 2018-12-23 00:14]我不知道你所说的"深度交流"是什么意思…对于我，就是早起的一声问候，睡前的一句晚安，生病时的嘘寒问暖…分享美好的景观音乐舞蹈和幽默…说一些甜蜜思念的话和打情骂俏。如果这对你不够，那我们在一起是错误的。

I don't know what you mean by "deep communication." For me, it's a morning greeting, a goodnight, asking after each other when sick, sharing beautiful music and dance and humor, saying sweet and missing-you words, flirting. If this is not enough for you, then we are wrong to be together.

Yu wanted depth. Feng wanted daily warmth. Neither of you was wrong. Neither of you would change. The whole next three years are partly a refusal to believe that this could be the actual structure of the problem.

Eight days later, on New Year's Eve, Feng writes her counterpart manifesto — and Yu his:

[Feng, 2018-12-31]我爱你 就是纯粹的 没有商量余地的❤️😎

[Yu]❤️❤️❤️

[Yu]我爱你也是没有索求之心

[Yu]没有功利，只求认认真真善待，纯纯粹粹用心

[Feng]💋💋💋

I love you. It's pure. There's no negotiating about it. I love you with no demand, no calculation, only sincerity. Both manifestos are real. Both belong to the same year. The album from 2018 — the LA hotels, the Malibu coast, the Venice beach, the Beijing trip, the DC train station — was made between these two declarations.

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