For weeks, I had not read well. I picked up books and put them down after a page or two, finding little to sustain me. I was writing, though, making up stories to talk with Nikolai. (Where else can we meet but in stories now?)

See my point? he said. You cannot not write. You don't even mind writing badly.

Because I don't want to feel sad or I don't know how to feel sad?

What's the difference? he said. Does a person commit suicide because he doesn't want to live, or doesn't know how to live?

I could say nothing.

I can always win an argument against you—you notice that? he said.

Had I argued better, would he have stayed longer in this world? I didn't ask him the question. Like sadness, it was there all the time.

Instead I read him a poem I had translated from Chinese, one I had memorized when I turned twelve but only began to understand now.

When young, I knew not the taste of sorrow
But loved to climb the storied towers
I loved to climb the storied towers
To compose a new poem, faking sorrow

Now I have known the taste of sorrow
and want to talk about it, but I refrain
I want to talk about it, but refrain
And say merely: a chilly day, what a fine autumn

—Yiyun Li: Where Reasons End

Holly Margl is the award-winning author of Witnessing Grief; Inviting Trauma and Loss to Our Coaching Conversations, An Enneagram Perspective, coach, coach mentor, and trainer specializing in grief, trauma, and the Enneagram.