Munkh-Undraga Bilegsaikhan

Dandelions

I cut the soft stem with my nails, pulling the flower off of the rest of the plant. Then, a sudden surge of regret. Will this hurt the dandelion? I decide that I should learn about that first next time but there’s no use in lingering on a decision already made, now. I close my eyes and feel the wind on my hair as cars turn by through the crossroads. The feeling that I must rush this wish returns with the sound of rushing cars and the rushing people in them. Okay. 

“I want to live with my boyfriend. My new family. Somewhere peaceful and safe.

”I know that’s not one wish but I don’t remember that being a rule, anyway. I say,

“I will free you now, and you will bring my wishes to me.” 

I blow and the soft seedlings fly away into the road. That’s not good - they should be in soil that grows. I turn around towards the patch of dirt and blow the rest to the ground. 

Being in a long distance relationship is ruining my life. After three years of being separate from the one person you want the most, one becomes almost consumed by the rules of distance. Every phone-call, a lifeline, every hour slept is an hour spent passing the time. Looking to the clock countless times every day: for guidance, for rules, and for rewards. It’s like an item of worship, sitting right beside the altar with the White Tara and the Bodhisattva, staring down with its expressionless face. It is not a forgiving god. 

Sometimes, I consider ending it. It would be easier than most break-ups, I assume. I don’t have to see him at school or worry about packing his stuff up. They’re already not here. Not the whole of it, anyway. Only the gifts. When I first entered this relationship at seventeen, I was fully convinced that physical distance would not matter in a good relationship. That was because I wasn’t a serious girlfriend or a serious person.The convenience of online-dating quickly turned into a terrifying existential dread once I actually became invested, almost in spite of myself. Our connection is inherently fragile, dependent. Living only through technological and systematic miracles. 

It’s too convenient to leave when you’re already far away. 

I have left many things behind. I don’t often think about them. In America, we live in the now and the near future, speeding along to and fro, not having much of a memory or long-term plans. Every year, we start fresh with a new report. A place like this is perfect for my mother and her aversion to rest, a trait which I seem to have fully inherited by now. 

Yet, there’s always something in the human soul that can’t be fully silenced. I think about my dreams for maybe two minutes when I’m awake, but I still have them every night. They always take me somewhere. It seems that even when there are no roads home, your mind finds a way to float there by itself. 

In the mountains of my childhood, there weren’t many flowers. I remember climbing up the dirt streets in the winter time, holding tight the sleeves of my grandmother, taking care not to slip on the ice. There were rows of houses on each side, disappearing into the gray smoke

about 10 meters ahead. My neighbor to the south had a tree, which I was always curious about, as none of the other neighbors or our own yard had trees. We had dandelions. Everybody had dandelions - even the cracks in the cement of the main road had dandelions. 

I didn’t have a second thought about picking them off back then. Emee said they were weeds, so I didn’t need to worry about hurting them. I had many wishes when I whispered to the flowers: most forgotten, none realized. I seem to always wish for the wrong thing. 

I can’t seem to stop myself. I’m picking dandelions by the side of the road and ten years ago, I’m laying on the hard dirt floor beside the stem of my desire. I know I can’t help myself, so I look for softness in the earth. I find it in the fuzzy seeds of the flower of my hope. That’s all the softness I get, except for the feathery clouds far from here, smeared on the blue canvas like paint. 

In this dream, I start walking in one direction and there are not many fences. I want to know where my world ends, so I mark the edge as that cloud over there, slowly drifting west. When I finally get to my destination, the horizon is another color, and you’re fading into the light that falls through the curtains. I don’t tell anyone, but you lift me up when you hold me. 

When I tell you a story, I don’t remember things the normal way, the roads of my memories have broken down alongside the ocean, where all roads end between our continents. I tell you of the mountains and the fields of old houses, I tell you of my dreams and trips into the country, I tell you what I can’t say happened for sure, but they’ve buried themselves in my mind and spring up at your gaze. I’m trying to tell a story that’s been incomplete, abandoned. I’m really trying to ask you this: are you the one I lost long before I knew?

Words from the Author:

Dandelions is a story created to connect my life now in America, after being unable to return home to Mongolia for ten years, with the experiences of my childhood. The piece is honest in its depiction of the fuzziness of memory but the starkness of impression created in one’s childhood. It includes imagery of the mountain districts of my home city of Ulaanbaatar, one of the most air-polluted cities in the entire world. At the same time, my country calls itself the “The Nation of the Eternal Blue Sky”, a contrast which is expressed using a narrative, story-telling voice. On the other hand, the entire story deals with themes of separation and all of the tools we normally have to stay connected - from phone calls to dreams, to the Dandelion, which grows everywhere. It is a story symbolic of everlasting hope and persistence in the face of separation and hardship - like the weeds that continue to grow in the harshest of conditions.