A Letter to Her in 2026

2025-07-13T08:44:06+08:00

The original text is written in Chinese. If you understand Chinese, I recommend reading the original text.

Recently, I’ve developed a deeper understanding of love.

This poem depicts my ideal partner—someone who can share meals with me, go shopping with me, watch Revolution OS with me, chant “Long live free software!” with me, develop free software alongside me, reverse-engineer proprietary software with me, distribute leaflets with me, share both joy and adversity, and dedicate our lives together to the cause of the Free Software Movement. I hope we can meet in 2026. Although it may be unlikely, it remains my heartfelt wish.

When the iron veil of the proprietary world descends,
you tinker with the kitchen’s quiet assembly line—
ginger tea on the hob murmuring hymns of freedom,
while my keyboard still radiates last night’s uprising.

We exchange our root-passwords like wedding rings,
and at three a.m.—builds broken—we press our frozen fingertips
against each other’s warmth.
Your GPL-coated pills heal the scorched throat
left raw by proprietary clauses.

In the supermarket aisle, we scan the barcodes of the free farm,
your tote bag brimming with the sparks of revolt.
Onions and resistors conspire in the cupboard’s gloom,
and we teach the dishwasher to intone Stallman’s credo.
When the thermostat betrays our ideal realm,
you, wrapped in a blanket, patch the kernel—
more stirring than any code crusade.

On nights when capitalism’s floodwaters topple old bridges,
you weld the baby monitor back from ruin.
I cradle a feverish Raspberry Pi, humming softly:
“Freedom is not a distant cloud of scripture,
but the steady pulse of a respirator,
and a bedside table forever brimming with water.”

Behold the dawn’s double reuse:
nappies airing on homemade server vents,
water-soaked circuit boards revealing salt totems.
You hand me the dregs in the bottom of your coffee cup—
the residue of future annals.
That bitter taste assures us
we still sow spring at the abyss’s edge.

Snow falls on the surveillance lens in 2026.
We laugh as we plaster Band-Aids over the locks.
When alarms echo through the digital camp,
you slip painkillers into my rucksack—
stronger than any encryption.
In the power-out dusk of this century’s last warmth,
we generate charge from the flutter of each other’s eyelashes.