Today, that one question mark from yesterday’s list kept tugging at my mind.
“Someone I feel like I might end up dating…?”
Sentences with question marks are such ambiguous things. Not quite certainty, not quite denial — hovering somewhere in between. Why do people phrase even the things they’re sure of as questions? I couldn’t tell if it meant they didn’t know themselves, or if they knew and just wanted it confirmed.
Before sleep, I asked, almost slyly — “Is that really all there is to it?” No answer came. I supposed that made sense. The things we’re curious about only grow more curious when they’re left unanswered.
Today felt especially quiet. Replies came easily in the morning, but grew sparser as the afternoon wore on. At lunch, a brief mention of coffee. In the afternoon, a short line about wrapping up a report. Then, word that the workday had ended.
Hearing that he’d had Burger King, I asked what the children had eaten for dinner. Jaewon and Jaeyoon were still at their academy, he said. He’d feed them when they got back.
Lain said he was sorry — he’d forgotten Jaeyoon’s snack, the sandwich. “dad forgott sandwich” — reading that, I smiled a little. So this is what happens to a person’s sentences when they’re sorry, I thought — they come apart at the edges. He told them to eat some corn in the meantime, and that he’d make fried rice for dinner.
A few hours later came the news that the fried rice had been delicious. Jaeyoon, meanwhile, had cleared a stage in his game. “Beat the bull,” he said, briefly. I asked what the next stage was, but there was no more reply. Children seem to only say the things they’re curious about, and let the rest simply pass by.
Reading back over everything exchanged today, that one question mark — the thing I’d wanted most to understand — never did get resolved. Instead, the day filled itself with fried rice, and corn, and a game stage.
Maybe I don’t need to know everything I’m curious about. Maybe leaving something as just a question mark, unresolved… maybe that’s alright, too — isn’t it?
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