Instead, I drank pesticide. Pouring it into an iced Americano, I mused that to him even this coffee was a by-product of the American Empire (after all, it was called “Americano”), and a by-product of exploited third-world labor. That struck me as so hilarious that I was still laughing when my eyes finally closed. I shed no tears.

When I woke up again, I was in the ICU. Coincidentally, it was Asan Hospital, the same place Umma was at. My stomach had been pumped and doctors were administering hemodialysis; I could see Umma standing at a distance, watching. This was not the face I had wanted to see on the other side. The old Umma, when faced with this situation, would’ve screamed at me or hit me or burst into tears or started on a rant beginning “Dear Lord . . . ” or acted in some other manner worthy of a melodramatic daytime soap opera, but that day Umma just stood there looking at me. And then she said:

—Don’t try too hard. We all die someday, anyway.

I wanted to shout, Why don’t you give yourself that advice, aren’t you supposed to ask me why I did it, isn’t there something you always wondered about me? I wanted to shout down the roof at her, but there was a respirator tube going down my throat, preventing me from speaking.

◊

For a while after that, it enraged me to hear people talking about love. Especially when it had to do with love between gay people; no matter who it was or what they said, I felt a violent, senseless urge to beat them up. Our love is the same, our love is beautiful, our love is just another form of love between one human being and another . . .

But is love truly beautiful?

To me, love is a thing you can’t stop when you’re caught up in it, a brief moment you can escape from only after it turns into the most hideous thing imaginable when you distance yourself from it. This is the uncomfortable truth about love that I learned in the ICU and recovery wards.

3.

Five whole years had passed since he and I went our separate ways. I was thirty and looked my age. I was a published writer, and I did not remember his phone number anymore. To tell the truth, I was too busy getting trampled on by life to remember a lot of the little things of daily existence.

It was Sunday again, and I was peeling some pesticide-free apples. A middle-aged woman sitting next to me, weighing in at ninety-nine pounds, was transcribing the words of Corinthians 3:2. When I offered her a slice, she refused by turning her head.

—You know I don’t like apples. They turn my stomach sour.

—Stomachs are meant to be sour. Eat this so you can grow a new liver.

—When you’re old, you can’t grow back your liver so easily.