17.12.18

Vancouver Writing: Evelyn Lau

HOW IT BEGAN

GRATITUDE

“It’s too, too, too beautiful.”
—Jun Lin’s last Facebook post, accompanying a photograph of a park,
days before he was murdered, and his body dismembered,
allegedly by Luka Magnotta

We don’t yet know how it began.
Perhaps he posted as a potential friend,
invited you for Starbucks and biscotti
after class, or Labatts and chicken wings
on the weekend, hockey on TV.
Perhaps you looked forward to the visit,
bounding up the stairs bearing some small gift
like a good guest, some small token
to appease the gods of hospitality
at the front door. That was
the sort of man you were—
on time every day, hoping to find in Canada
not money or status, like your classmates,
but love. A romantic. This painful light

shines in your face in photographs,
moon-bright, a little shy, eager
to please. An A student, studying computers
and engineering, a decade older
than your classmates, old enough that in China,
you wrote, they would respectfully
call you “uncle”—
what you wanted were peers.
Friends, lovers. You were lonely,
vulnerable in your loneliness.
Wanted someone to ride with you
on the midnight subway train in Montreal,
its flickering hospital-green half-light
you captured on film, deserted snowscapes
you posted to friends in China—
you were the only figure in all that ground.

But then there was that day in the park.
It was too, too, too beautiful—
a park others rushed through every day,
heads bowed over texts and tweets
while you stood gaping in awe, in a daze
of wonder, craning your neck
to see the sky swimming with green,
the drowsy parasols of the maples
sprinkling your delighted face
with sap, silent gust of wind swelling
through the stately willows, the vegetable whiff
of mown grass, too much, you thought,
it’s too much, days before it was taken
from you in a blaze of rage. Montreal,
released from the frozen grip of winter,
leafing out in the spring.
You had worked and saved,
worked and saved for years
to arrive at this place.

- Evelyn Lau: as published in Geist