The Poet Empress

It is true, he has suffered, but if everyone who suffered became monsters, the world would be overrun with them.

It could be the greatest nation in the world, the most magnificent empire there ever existed. But if it could not keep its own children and fed, was it really something worth fighting to save?

I had not become so wicked in my heart that I had stopped believing people could change. If a gentle child could turn into a monster, I thought, then surely a monster could become gentle again.

Maybe some stories were like jarred butterflies, I thought, fluttering free as soon as someone broke the glass.

Or, at the very least, turn me little again.' He wiped his eyes with a sleeve, and stared at the plate of mung bean cakes. 'Little enough that all I wanted to reach for was the banquet table. When all I knew to desire was a sweet cake. And even if everyone punished me, or yelled at me, or hated me, at least back then I didn’t know why. If you can’t turn me into a fish, at least turn me little.

He never managed to articulate what it was he didn’t know, but I knew his meaning. I don’t know how much suffering is normal. How much was ordinary, expected, the price we paid to live. How much was created by us, needless.

It is easy to make fleeting footprints in the snow; It is hard to make lasting marks in the stone. Shall I dance ten thousand steps, unwitnessed? Shall I make one carving, forever known?

It is not a weakness to be seen

From one branch, two azaleas blooming, Fighting for a piece of the dawn. The roots lie rotten, the leaves die weeping; Come night, all the flowers are gone.

... It is not a curse to be confined to water. Although to an onlooker, the poem argues, a fish might seem trapped in its pond—although to you and I, it may seem to know nothing of the world on land—it is not so. A fish can still admire the reflection of spring clouds on the water. It can still taste the blossoms that dapple its surface and imagine itself swimming among the trees. It understands more than we will ever realize. His words were so beautiful, so vivid, that I could almost hear that injured fish speaking to me from amidst its suffering: Do not pity me. My life might be smaller than yours, but it is full of joy and worth living. Do not assume that I dream of greatness. Do not assume that I wish to be reborn in a different time or a different place, in a different life. I wish only to admire the blossoms in this one. Do not pity me—for I am exuberant!

Everyone who tells a story leaves a part of themselves inside it

why are women always expected to love those who would hurt us? To take care of those who would use us

You saw what those thousands of people did in front of my father. All the fanfare, all the ceremony—the charade, the theater—I can’t stand it. I loathe to think of people pretending they mourn me when they do not, or praising me when they detest me, or remembering me as kind when I was wicked. I cannot bear the thought of anyone offering to go echo-step with me when they do not mean it.' His voice wavered with real emotion, real fear. 'Wei—if I die tomorrow, I beg of you, don’t let them make a spectacle of me in my death. I wish to die quietly, just as I am.

It is not a crime,' Terren said through his teeth, 'if nobody can punish me for it.

If you refuse to be cruel, someone will be cruel to you first. If you refuse to make others suffer, then you’ll be made to suffer first.

At last, he lifted his face from his sleeves and wiped furiously at his eyes. His voice was still broken as he said, 'I should have you beheaded for seeing me like this.' It was another flat attempt to get me afraid of him—or perhaps merely a force of habit. But I knew the threat did not have his heart behind it. 'Is that so?' 'Beheaded and worse.' 'Terren, it is not a weakness to be seen.' There were no knives between us now, no fear, not even enough distance for a sparrow to spread its wings. I looked into his eyes, and though they were older and meaner, there was no question they were the same ones as on the boy I’d seen in the meadow. I looked into them and I saw him. Maybe it was possible to love somebody that one hated. Maybe, buried heart-deep, I really did love him. Not the kind of love a wife shared with her husband—that was not possible, after all he’d done to me; I might have borne no scars, but my body still remembered—but the kind of love one human could not help but feel for another when they had to pry away blades to find them. I did not know what else to call it, if not love.

I knew now that one day there was going to be an end to all this suffering, like the sun erasing the cold of night.

I am beginning to suspect,' he said, in barely a whisper, 'that you are not afraid enough of me.

I was ashamed at how thrilled I felt. For the first time, instead of cowering from my monster, I was walking at its side. For the first time, when it opened its foul, bloodthirsty jaws, it would not be to bite me but someone else.

The cat lives in pursuit of the mouse; The tree grows in pursuit of the sun. Are we the cat or the tree, pursuers? Are we the wind, born only to run?

Maybe you are meant to end something bad

Sometimes fiction is more important than the truth.

We hoped for the only thing left for us to hope: that those who came after us would fix the mess we had created. We hoped that the next generation would be a little less foolish

How unfair it was, I could not help but think, that the most wicked of us also got to be the most invincible.

There will always be winning and losing,' she said lightly, 'so long as not all people are born equal.

Do you think any of my brothers truly wish to die? The pretense is more insulting to my father’s cold body than if they had not gotten on their knees at all.' I kept my eyes on the carpet. I understood his way of thinking—I really did. But at the same time, I could not bring myself to agree. If I was really his wife who loved him, if I really wanted to help him become a better emperor, I might have advised him differently. Terren, I might have said, don’t you know? Sometimes pretense is everything. For the people who have never stepped foot within the palace walls, I might have told him, rumors are all they have. For those who live a thousand li away, who have never seen your face, stories are all they know. For the little girls in villages, far from the capital, all they have of you are pieces others give them. Terren, don’t you know? Sometimes fiction is more important than the truth. But I was going to kill him tomorrow, so I said nothing.

This whole time in the palace, I may have been occupied with my own survival, but that did not mean I didn’t think of them often. I missed home with a terrible, constant ache—an ache that was not noticed when there were more pressing pains, but when everything was calm again, on a day like this one, it was there waiting for me.

Pity the fish,” the singing girl lamented. “It will never swim among trees.

He might have been a monster, but not all the ugliness in the world was his fault

Those who are starved are most desperate. And even the Ancestors know that women have long been starved for power.” We went our separate ways.