Will she make a break for it?

Or will loneliness break her?

Jade Pavilion Songs (10)
Quan Deyu

I sit alone,
    Wrapped in a cloak,
        Deep in the night,
            Moon on cold dew.
Behind this drape,
    The pain cuts deep,
        I daren’t slip out
            To look for you.

权德舆  玉台体十二首·其十
独自披衣坐，更深月露寒。
隔帘肠欲断，争敢下阶看。

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Ten poems into this twelve-poem cycle, and our heroine is at the end of her tether. Something has to give. She’s awake in the middle of the night, staring at moonlight (symbol of romance) and dew (symbol of beauty) and feeling only cold. She’s got her cloak on. Of course she doesn’t dare to do the unthinkable and leave the house, roam in the moonlight, take action to change her situation… of course not. She would never.

But just so you know… spoiler for the next poem… something changes. This series has a happy ending. And I dunno, maybe it was just coincidence that at the moment our abandoned wife reached breaking point, the husband returned. Or maybe, in between the lines of the poems, something else happened. I guess we’ll never know.

I just cracked open Nightbitch by Rachel Yoder - with the upcoming movie, someone blogged about the book, which I didn’t know about. It involves a mother who reaches her breaking point during nights where she feels alone. Obviously it’s a very different piece of art, but the similarity to this moment in Quan Deyu’s cycle was striking to me. I’m loving Nightbitch, by the way. Highly recommended, based on the first 1/4 of the book.