Dear beloved child of mine,

You were the size of a kumquat when I first found out about your existence. Since discovering this fact, I’ve stopped eating the small, orange fruit that I can enfold in one palm. But they’re everywhere now. Hanging from small trees. Displayed in wooden bowls. Candied on crisp tarts. It’s Chinese New Year, and some people believe they signify wealth and prosperity. For me, they symbolize only one thing: you.

Often, I imagine what it would be like to meet you, the questions you might one day ask. How high is the sky? What’s the biggest number in the world? Why do people die? Or perhaps, you might begin with the arguably less challenging questions, like: How did you and mummy fall in love? It’s a question I might take a lifetime to answer, an answer that would probably differ from your mother’s. Still, would you let me try?

The first time I met your mother was on April 14, 2018. It was a Saturday, and I was making my way through a park to meet some friends for coffee when her bicycle rammed into me. I fell twice that afternoon—to the ground and in love with her. The moment I stared into her startling blue eyes, I glimpsed in them depths I wanted to spend the rest of my life getting lost in. You may laugh at me now, my child, but I’m telling you nothing but the truth.

The truth is, I’ve always loved your mother more than she loved me. If she hadn’t fractured my ankle, she wouldn’t have acceded to a date. We met again at the same spot in the same park. Five minutes away was a café surrounded by lush foliage. Sunlight shone through the leaves of the canopy, under which we sipped yuzu mint tea. In the one-hundred-and-twenty-eight minutes I was granted with her, I discovered several things about your mother.

1. The scattering of freckles across your mother’s nose dances like twinkling stars in the night sky when she smiles.
2. She prefers dining al fresco to being engulfed by air conditioning.
3. The tinkling of your mother’s laughter is the purest sound in the world.
4. There is a curious encyclopedia hidden inside her head.
5. The tips of her elvish ears perk up whenever she hears the chirping of birds, which she has the extraordinary ability to identify by name.
6. Did you know is her favorite way to begin a sentence. Did you know that birds living in the city tend to sing louder to be heard? Did you know that over a third of the land on Earth is used for farming? Did you know that palm oil is pushing the world’s largest butterfly to the brink of disappearing? Did you know that over three-quarters of coral reefs might lose their colors due to ocean warming?
7. The ocean blue of your mother’s eyes contains swirls of white and flecks of gold, akin to the sphere of the Earth seen from the moon.
8. She has a soft spot for the vulnerable, which is why, as I hobbled out of the café at the hundred-and-twenty-eighth minute, wincing at my ankle encased in a bandage, she couldn’t say no to meeting me again.

The recovery of my fractured bone took such an exceptionally long time that by the end of it, your mother and I were dating exclusively. With her, I found myself doing things I wouldn’t otherwise have done. Bird watching at Sungei Buloh. Hiking around MacRitchie Reservoir. Trekking up Bukit Timah Hill. Cycling around Coney Island. Kayaking through lush mangroves. So besotted was I with your mother that even my actions began to mirror hers. I started opting for plant-based meat and carried a reusable cup and tote wherever I went. Like your mother, I got myself a composting bin, set up a small hydroponic garden on my balcony. Inspired by your mother’s choice of career as a climate researcher, I quit my job on Jurong Island and joined a company doing ESG investing. Only then, four months into our relationship, did I mention my profession to her.

It had pleased me so much to see my efforts pleasing your mother that I persisted in maintaining these new habits for over a year, as though intoxicated by an addictive drug that was the tinkling music of your mother’s laughter.

But eventually, things changed.

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He put down his pen. Outside, it was dark, well past midnight. In the distance, the clack of mahjong tiles continued. From the corner of his eye, he glimpsed a white tiffin carrier, a blue reusable cup and a canvas tote lying at the foot of his bed, coated with dust.

He considered tearing up the letter and starting again. He would skip certain parts of the story. Things he couldn’t include in this letter to his child. Like how he had begun to find those once charming eccentricities wearing thin. How he no longer savored getting sunburnt. How it had become increasingly tiresome to return home with a pile of soiled containers waiting to be washed, where the kitchen reeked of compost. How he had gone to McDonalds after a long work day of listening to people pontificate about greenwashing and wolfed down two double cheeseburgers without feeling any trace of guilt.

But what would be left?

Without warning, the memory of their first quarrel flashed in his mind. It had taken place a few months ago, in late August. They had been preparing dinner at her place, with the television running in the background, when she suddenly scoffed, “Yeah, right.”

He glanced up from the chopping board, knife and vegetable still in his hands. “What?”

She gestured to the television screen, on which the Prime Minister was delivering the National Day Rally speech. “Everything else must bend at the knee to safeguard the existence of our island nation,” she repeated in a mocking tone. “Do you seriously believe that?”

He shrugged, too exhausted to engage in another debate with her. His eyes returned to the chopping board, where he sliced away a decaying nub from the core of the carrot.

“He himself talked about the rising temperatures and sea levels,” she continued, oblivious to his lack of response. “The extreme weather occurrences. The forced migration of displaced populations. The ensuing conflict and unrest. The possible pandemics and food shortages. But what is being done?”

He let out a sigh as she threw a wooden spoon into the salad bowl. His stomach was rumbling, and it was late. Gripping the knife in his hand, he began cutting the carrots with increased speed.

“Did you know that Singapore is one of the top ten countries in the world with the largest ecological footprint?”

He pressed his lips together as she went on vehemently about how the country was one of the world’s largest oil trading hubs and refinery centers, about how a third of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions was attributed to twenty corporations alone, a significant number of which had set up refineries on Jurong Island. These assertions were nothing new to him. But what more could he do as a lone individual? Besides, had she not heard the PM declare that a hundred-billion-dollar climate change plan would be put in place? What about the international climate agreements Singapore had ratified, the introduction of a carbon tax, the investments in renewable energy?

“What we really need is an urgent transition away from the carbon economy,” she cried out, sprinkling specks of saliva over the salad bowl.

He flung the carrot peel and decaying nub into the composting bin. “Can we just get dinner ready, please?” he snapped, regretting his words the moment they left his lips.

A week passed in which they didn’t speak to each other.

Then, he attempted to make amends by organizing a weekend staycation at a stylish eco-friendly hotel that had clinched multiple awards for its commitment to sustainability. Throughout that weekend, neither of them mentioned the quarrel. Things seemed to return to normal after that. Never in his wildest dreams could he have imagined the horror of what took place two and a half months later.

Involuntarily, he began shaking, the exertion of recollection too much to bear. Before him, the words on the paper blurred. How could he possibly explain to his child about the day he had prematurely found that note of hers, how he had tried to locate her whereabouts, how he had finally seen her from a distance, calmly sitting herself down in the middle of a park and dousing herself with gasoline? That flash of light. That leap of flames. How desperately he had tried to put out the fire carbonizing her skin. How helplessly he had watched her being taken away from him. The hours he had wept by her hospital bed, laying on it a being he could no longer recognize. The mixture of disbelief, confusion, grief and anger refusing to cease. The countless times he had read her parting note, the words now indelibly etched in his head. Her self-immolation; an act of protest against climate change. Why, he wanted to cry.

It was then, ten weeks after the staycation they had gone on, that he discovered she was expecting.

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My child, I do not know if we will ever get to meet, if you will one day get to know your mother, if you will get to ask these questions in the distant future. I am writing this letter not knowing if you will ever get to read it, not knowing if you will get to see this burning world in which we live. One day, we will all wither like fruit and return to the earth from which we came. You were the size of a kumquat when I first found out about your existence. I often wonder if your mother knew. Would she still have done what she did? Yet these are questions I cannot answer. So, I do the only thing I can: wait.

With love,

Your father

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​​Agnes Chew (https://agneschew.wordpress.com) is the author of Eternal Summer of My Homeland (forthcoming from Epigram Books) and The Desire for Elsewhere (Math Paper Press, 2016). Her work has appeared in Litbreak Magazine, NonBinary Review, Ricepaper, wildness, and époque press, among others. Born and raised in Singapore, she is currently based in Germany.