In our own words

The letters we read on the beach

We wrote these on the deck of a floating bungalow on Cheow Lan lake, back to back, on the ninth night, and swore not to read them to each other until the beach. This is the first time either of us said these out loud. If you could not be there — and almost none of you could — this is the part we most wanted you to have.

Alex, sunburnt and half-smiling, half-length portrait on the trip, string on his wrist — Alex, to Jey

Jey —

I came to Chiang Mai with one bag and a return ticket, and I bought four cups from you because I could not think of a single sentence in your language that would let me stay at your table any longer. You saw straight through it by the second Sunday. You let me keep coming anyway.

I have now driven the length of your country in a car named after tea, and I have watched you argue with a map, fix a bicycle, translate for me only the half of what your grandmother said that you wanted me to hear, and fall asleep sitting up on a lake with a pen still in your hand. There is no version of my life from before you that I want back.

I am not good at your language and I am worse at sitting still, and you have never once asked me to be different. You just moved the table so I could reach it. I promise to spend the rest of my life learning the other half of what your grandmother said. I promise to keep the cracked ones. I promise that whatever city argues with us next, we get the squid and we make it up by morning.

You are the only place I have ever wanted a return ticket to, and now I don’t need one.

— Alex

Jey, dark hair tied up with loose strands, half-length portrait on the trip holding a grey-green handmade cup, string on her wrist — Jey, to Alex

Alex —

You did not need four cups. You are not a subtle man. My grandmother knew before I did, which is why she tied the string on both of us and not only on me.

I have spent twelve days watching you drive on the wrong side of your own instincts on the right side of my roads, stall my grandfather’s car at every temple in Thailand, and say “I love the car” to me in the middle of Ayutthaya with your whole heart. I would not correct it for anything. You love the car. You love me. You have never once made me choose which country I get to be from.

I make things that break. I keep them anyway, because a crack is just the pot telling you where it has been. We are going to break sometimes. I am not afraid of it. I have watched you make up over squid at one in the morning and I know what you are made of now.

You crossed a dateline and an ocean and half my family’s suspicion to sit on this lake with me. I am not going anywhere you are not. Drive slowly. Feed me properly. That is all she asked, and it is all I ask too.

— Jey, your rak rot

That’s the whole of it. Thank you for coming this far with us — you can leave us a note if you’d like, or start back at the top of the drive.