[written 105 days before Sang's death]

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– Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy: Inferno. Canto 1 Lines 88-90. [John Ciardi, Tr.]

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Sang was concretizing things for me, again. He does this for me all the time.

Listen, man, I’m going to say this, because I think you’re finally ready to hear it.

He prefaces all of his lessons. He worries so much about doing harm. It’s his form of sweetness, trust me on this. He continued:

Sometimes, when you’re talking about writing, or literature, or your students -- especially your students -- all of the trauma and abuse just goes away for awhile.  What’s left is this kind, gentle, curious, intelligent human being.  You are finally on the verge of being in that pure form, all the time. You are finally becoming yourself again.  Don’t stop.  Keep writing it out.

I wouldn’t be alive without him. You have to understand this.  He has to understand this. He knows how to cause me necessary pain. He knows when to push me and when to back off. He knows this because he bothered to get to know me. For thirteen years he prodded and retreated and engaged, always testing and pushing my boundaries, always getting me to stretch just a little.  He did this because he thought I was worth it, and because he was tired of being alone. He wanted a younger brother, I suspect; I had always been the eldest. He felt stigmatized, isolated by his foreign birth; I was beaten into a shell for being soft.

Or maybe he looked at me and saw himself, if he had been beaten as a child. I think this pissed him off. I think it still pisses him off. I think he wants to go back in time. He wants to protect me when I was nine years old.

He is six years my senior. He was fifteen then. We could have had a serious shot, working together, at taking my father out.

But that’s my vengeance talking; and I’m not vengeful in deed—only thought.  That’s all anger talking, and I’m not angry much, anymore. I’m feeling regret.  I am feeling overwhelming loss.

I cried to Sang about all of this, last night—finally, because he is my family. Because I know this for sure: he isn’t planning to leave me at all.

All of you, out there, who’ve been reading my work—do you understand what that means to little boys like me?

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Sang's Response:

September 20, 2009 at 6:51 PM

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