Introduction

My son, Ren, and I conceived the concept for this anthology as a means to channel our experiences with love and grief. While you can read each story on its own without context, a single string runs through all of them that deals with different kinds of love, which, for one reason or another, breaks apart. However, the tales in this collection offer some redemption in the midst of loss, and these, we hope, thread a skein of meaning and hope across an otherwise bleak canvas. Because in a world of billions, against all odds, he and I found each other, and knew in a moment that our souls were one.

Once, there was a boy and a girl who met when the leaves were just beginning to fall.

He, a boy with broken wings whose heart could carry the world. She, a girl who didn’t realize there was room enough in hers to hold him.

Distance is merely a number to those whose spirits cross oceans to intertwine with one another.

So it was with them.

Their voices made their way through armory of stone to whisper gentleness to soothe secret bruises. And as the days blended, one into another, they found a refuge in each other.

Though the outside world clamored, and inside it crumbled into chaos, still they remained.

“Don’t let me go,” they would say to each other.

“I won’t. I won’t.”

And they were okay. Because they had each other.

“Who am I to you?”
“You’re the one who knows the melody of my heart.”

Tiffany Chu
August 2021