When they said the city was lonely, I didn’t believe them. I didn’t believe you, Grandma. I ran far away from you and into the capital that you detest just to prove I could love something that you hate. I knew I wouldn’t get married right away, that I wouldn’t have kids right away, that I would vie for a dream so massive it would cover all the hardships you ever went through, including the hardships I gave you, too. You told me to never end up like you, so all I saw was your long hours in the kitchen and harboring vines of stress in your chest because people mistake your fortitude for bitterness. Fine. I don’t want to be like you. Plus, how could the city possibly be lonely if I’m busy?

Except these days, all I can think of is the time I ran away from your home to find my own home. As if I could find my own home in the city with a backpack and your sunhat as my only source of protection from the coastal heat. That’s how brazen I was. Back then, my rebellion meant nothing to me other than the sheer freedom I felt being detached from your house. Years after I left your wretched place to seek a home far away from you, I started to miss you. I became you. I became harder on the people around me, and I trusted people less. I loved ardently and furiously and worried more than I could ever worry, because that’s who I saw you were and that’s why I never cared about a single thing around you. The world was mine, and you were everything that kept it spinning. 

Grandma, in the capital, there is an exodus of people chasing a similar dream. I sauntered out of the busiest Daiso I’ve been to with a laundry basket in my arms, maybe some other toiletries I was missing when I moved into the city. Grandma, the only tender thing about the city was the eroding sky. What do you do when you fall out of love, Grandma? What do you do when your head feels full because you don’t understand my language? Grandma, what do I do when you’re the only one who listens to my ardent words but I hardly get to see you? What is this burning feeling in my chest that resembles desperation and what about this life is so equally devastating as it is abundant with marigold lights I find in paradise? What do I do when every night you tell me you believe in me unconditionally and I’m supposed to eat dinner alone now? Grandma, what do you do when you move to a strange city because you hate the one you left behind? What do you learn to love first? The people? The Pacific? The convenience store run by a lady who looks like you? The lady? Grandma, what do you do when I finally come back to you, and I call your place my home? How could you take me back? How did you take me back? Grandma, why can’t I bring myself to call you every night? Grandma, what do I do when I return to the city I hate and nothing is the same as I left it? Grandma, how do you deal with looking at your grandma and wishing she would stay young forever? Grandma, how do I make beef short rib soup, and have it taste like yours? Grandma, how do I deal with unrequited love? Grandma, how do you deal with a breakup? What is this fury meshed around my chest? Why can’t I stop crying? Was I always this beautiful?

Grandma. The sky is the most beautiful when it’s on fire. When your skin is colored pink by laughter and it’s the most brilliant portrait of a hero I have ever seen. I’ve seen you cry more times than you’ve smiled and I understand that seeing me grow in the increments of years makes our finite lives seem even more finite. But Grandma, it’s hard for me, too. I notice you growing, too. My heart feels like it might burst every time I maintain my tears in my throat because you deserve someone who will hold you with the resilience you have given them. You’re the brave one who let the first generation leave your house, and although you were gripping the dandelion stem, the seeds couldn’t have helped its departure when the wind picked up. Grandma, I still get corrected every day no matter what language I speak. Where I once worried my languages don’t make sense, now I don’t speak about my biggest dreams. Who do I have now? Who, Grandma, if not you?

Grandma, I found the answers in the people I came home to. Grandma, I found myself again on a new coast along the Pacific. Grandma, I can’t make beef short rib soup like yours, but I made it like mine. Grandma, even I can’t stay young forever. Grandma, every part of me that was besotted with that city I left behind smoldered into indigo billows along the new horizon, and it felt like my heart was crushed under the weight of my expectations. Grandma, there is someone who finds me as pretty as you do. Grandma, love exists. It really does. Grandma, I hated that city. What is this feeling? How could I look over my shoulder? 

It was simpler than I realized. Grandma, the origin of light goes back an uncountable number of years before the minuscule range of my life appeared on the spectrum of existence. Light still exists underwater. Light exists everywhere. Beyond you bearing the slightest illuminance, I saw the macrocosm. That city was the same. I was the one who came back different. In love again. There was no apocalypse. 

I’m older now. I understand why affection is strange to you and why you scold me into growing up then wait for me to fall asleep first. I understand why you want me to find a good partner and why you want me to get an education. I understand why you want me to come home to you despite our conflicting similarities and why you want me to speak your language. Grandma, we’re already worlds apart in our language as we speak. I often listen to the radio of your colloquies and it sounds like you are telling me to close the fridge to save electricity. I do it anyway. I don’t really know if staying still in the September heat will cool me down when the air is like your sticky embrace. I don’t really know if sleeping without a blanket on my stomach would make me sick. I do it anyway. 

Grandma, I want people to carry these words that relentlessly believe in them when they don’t believe in themselves. I want to give them a corner of their dream that allows them to rest. I want them to see the world if they desire to and discover that the love was actually within them all along. Cities don’t change. Dreams do. People do. Cities are not as effervescent as we are. They are imperishable. Even the ones made of dust. We’re hardly anything against a city, yet we still mutilate concrete. Yet, something as evanescent as a dream changes the way a city moves. I know now. I want to be like you, Grandma. For every word you have spoken to me, I hold dearly in my vocabulary. I reserve bookshelves for your language. I hold your summer heat in my chest. Maybe you remind me more of a wildfire than a camellia. But there’s something remarkable about your emerald brocades adorned in those fervent shade of flowers. There’s something about a raging shrub of vermilion red flowers that storm outrageously against the gray winter landscape that remind me of you. There’s something so extraordinarily beautiful about you, and it’s exactly why I believe I am beautiful, too.

I stopped kicking around the pebbles by the convenience store. I got used to the pungent salt air and the August heat became nothing to me after getting my heart broken and mended by the cities I love. You’re in all the paintings I encounter. You’re in every street name I remember. You’re in the weathered buildings I love and the photos I can’t discard. You know, that lady tells me I am beautiful. From the time I bought my first chocolate bar to my first pack of beer with my friends. Every visit, even when I hated then loved the city I left behind, even when I chose that city over yours and call it my home now. Each time, I tell her I resemble you. Every time, I tell people I resemble the best and worst parts of you, colored by a bloodline far brighter than camellia red. Maybe cities eventually change and perish far after our time. But Grandma, you know when cities and dreams and people crumble, flowers will bloom anyway.