“Let me tell you something,” Vilté said with a hint of a Lithuanian accent, her electric blue eyes locking with mine. Her and I had met just a few days prior at a little restaurant in Hoi An and struck an instant connection. Now we were sitting on a wooden boat somewhere off the coast of Vietnam, beneath a sun playing hide and seek between the few clouds in the sky. Our friends were dozing off on the deck, having found some life vests for a makeshift mattress on top of the ropes and the hard wooden floors. It was hard not to be lulled into a slumber by the small waves rocking the boat softly, along with the soothing burbles of the engine.
Whether it was because of the amount of coconuts we had consumed that day, or the sun we had been exposed to, or perhaps the distance to the shore, we began sharing stories from our lives; the funny ones, the angry ones, the sad ones, and the ones we wished we had forgotten but knew we never would. “There are three types of emotions,” she said. “First, there are the ones you write in air.” As she spoke, her fingers traced invisible letters looping in the air. “They are immediate, like an impulsive laugh to a joke, or the hurt when you prick your finger. As soon as they are there, they are also gone. Second are the ones you write in sand, they will linger for a while, but eventually the wind or the water will grab a hold and carry them off. Third, are the ones you set in stone, once they are written, they will stay forever. You should never write sorrow in stone.” Her voice gave away that she knew what she was talking about, her eyes looking off into the horizon across the water.
A Picture With Words 