Borrowing a Piece of Sky

That evening, my partner and I were taking apart the old brick path in the garden. When we reached the last few rows, I suddenly felt a little wilful and simply lay down on the ground to look up at the sky.

It was the width of those last few rows beneath me that carried me, all at once, back to the narrow stone ledge of the balcony from my childhood. The evening air was warm. Lying there, I could only see a narrow piece of sky between the buildings.

Tonight the sky above me was enormous, almost without an edge.

And yet I knew—

it was the same pair of eyes looking up.

The palm trees along the street. The alleys still wearing the look of evening. The wall beside the bicycle shed, covered in graffiti, its once-bright colors slowly steeped in the weathering of years.

By dinnertime, everyone had gone home. The streets grew quiet. The noise of the day settled with the coming of night, and the warm, damp air carried the smell of rice and dishes cooking in other people’s homes. I lay on the cold, hard stone ledge.

And the tears quietly began to fall.

Once, this little piece of sky had already been enough.

The world was small then—small enough that, most of the time, there was only me inside it.

How could she have known?

That one day there would be two children. Someone she loved deeply. Work. A home. A sky so wide it almost had no end.

There would be so much to remember. People waiting for her. People needing her. More and more people, more and more things she would be afraid to lose.

She would have so much.

So much that sometimes, she would miss the little girl she used to be.

She does not need spoilers from the future.

If anything, I am the one who needs to borrow her balcony—to spend a few minutes inside a world that still contains only herself.

Suddenly I missed that purity so much: the childlike lightness of a life in which, even for a few minutes, there was only me.

I wanted so badly to curl up again on that stone ledge, rest my head lightly against her thin little legs, and let all the toughness I had been holding up for so long pour hot down my cheeks.

一隙见天地，

万里入心间。

花繁压纤枝，

风过见素心。

"Through one narrow opening, heaven and earth.

Ten thousand miles enter the heart.

Blossoms grow heavy on slender branches;

After the wind, the simple heart remains."

Her small opening onto heaven and earth.

My ten thousand miles of human life.

Perhaps the wider the sky becomes,the heavier the heart must grow.

And what I want to go back and borrow from her, after all,

is only a few minutes of lightness.