One Story, Seven Times by Anne Royan

Winner of the 2017 Los Angeles Review Nonfiction Award, judged by Chelsey Clammer

What I loved most about this essay was how I had to take a number of pauses while reading it so I could catch my breath before diving into the next sentence. That’s how beautifully intense this essay is. And it’s not just the story being told that is intense. Yes, it’s a story about loss and suicide and what haunts us, which is interesting in and of itself, but the author does more than just narrate a harrowing event—she makes us experience it with her. Thanks. Using a non-traditional structure, we are shifted around different aspects and perspectives of this story, looking at all of these pieces of what was left behind when tragedy happened. This structure and the author’s unrelenting prose create a force of an essay that says so much about who we are as humans and how we connect with one another, but in such a small number of words. It’s a whirlwind of a story funneled down into remarkably poetic prose. -Chelsey Clammer

1. In Seven Paragraphs:

I was driving to the lake when I heard the impossible news that you died in Saigon in the early hours of the morning. There was no question of intention or the possibility of an accident; you left a note.  

Your funeral was this morning outside of Washington, DC. I didn’t attend. I could not face your mother pouring coffee into the fine China teacups and people standing around watching the home videos from family trips to Africa and Wyoming. Besides, I’ve already seen all those movies.

I’m alone at my lake house in Michigan. I open a bottle of Scotch, pour two glasses and walk to the end of the dock. I sit, dropping my feet into the water. Once, we sat in this exact spot, folded into each other, eating summer cherries we bought at the fruit stand in town.

I found an old photo in my drawer this morning: a black and white strip of four snaps. In one, you are looking at the camera and I am whispering something into your ear. You’re smiling. In the next two, we’re looking at each other. In the last, we’re kissing. Along with it, I found a small rectangular envelope from a time you sent me flowers. I opened the card and it read simply: “I miss you.”

We gave each other books as gifts with inscriptions scrawled across the interior pages. My books remain filed on my bookshelf up here, still. I wonder where your books are now, the ones with my handwriting inked out across the open expanse of the title pages.

I remember the first book I gave you. I remember the last book you gave me. Your final inscription read: “The stories of our lives are braided together. For now and for always.”

There are supposedly seven narrative conflicts in the stories that humans tell. Of these struggles, the human heart in conflict with itself is a cornerstone, the oldest story of them all. In this moment, I did not understand this yet and ten years later, I am still trying to figure it out.

2. In Seven Sentences:

One summer night in Saigon, your foot makes the deliberate move to step off of your 7th storey balcony and then, you fall.

The blunt stone slap of the sidewalk below is the sucker punch that breaks your body.

Your soft mouth splits open wide, but no words and no answers are left to spill out.

An ocean away, the news crawls slowly and when it catches up, it catches me by the throat and I choke on my tears.

I ask: Why, Landon?

I ask: Did you feel anything, my love?

I answer: I hope, the fuck, not.

3. Our First Seven Months:

The first time I saw you, I was walking across campus. You had wild hair. You wore thick, black glasses. You were a light all your own. My gaze lingered, my eyes following until you moved out of my sight.

By graduation, we lived together. We had a small balcony and a New York Times subscription. You read even more than I did; your books were stacked like slim towers on your side of the bed. If I close my eyes, I can still recall our small, shared space.

After college, we eventually went our separate ways. A Fulbright Scholarship whisked you off to Asia to explore the oral histories of the Ho Chi Minh trail by motorbike; I went to New York to work at a magazine.

4. In Seconds:

From the height of seven stories up a building, an object falling to the ground takes five seconds until impact. Give or take.

One-one thousand.

Two-one thousand.

Three-one thousand.

Four-one thousand.

5. Seven Years After We Met:

My final memory of you is the Rhode Island wedding of our closest friends from college. We had introduced them. He was your best friend and she was one of mine. A happy ending did come out of our relationship. It just wasn’t ours.

The wedding band played a song that struck a memory for us. You reached out your hand for me. As we danced, we watched the bride and groom and you kissed me, tenderly, on the cheek.

You said you were planning to return to the states, that Dartmouth Business School was next on your to-do list. I said that I had just started working on a book. The morning after the wedding, you left for your home in Saigon.

6.  Seven Sentences, Again:

I sip my Scotch and stare out into the darkness.

The water lapping against the dock and the sounds of my breath are the only noises in this still night.

I slide a finger slowly down into the drink I poured for you, swirling it in clockwise circles.

I say into the night: Landon, why?

I say into the emptiness: I tried to understand your struggle and the demons of your depression.

I admit: I guess, I never really could.

I begin to cry, exhausted, weary, wishing you the peace that you longed after.

7. Seven Words.

Only this, I still miss you too.

Anne Royan is a graduate of Savannah College of Art & Design (MFA, Writing), Brown University (BA) and the Columbia Publishing Course at Columbia University. She has worked in the fashion department at Harper’s Bazaar in New York City and as a PR Director for jewelry brands. She is a freelance contributing writer for magazines. A recipient of a SCAD Alumni Atelier Ambassadorship, she is at work on a series of travel essays in Provence, France.

Reach her at www.achapmanroyan.com