Maybe It Was Not Supposed to
Rongzhe Li
→BFA PT 2026
Gazing at the Horseshoe Bend, I couldn’t help but be silent. There is no doubt that the view is breathtaking. At the bottom of the bend, a river wound its way through stone, carving its path for billions of years. It should have been breathtaking, but it left me quiet. The landscape was stunning—ancient layers of orange and white rock stacked in quiet defiance, the Colorado River twisting far below like a ribbon of glass—yet the grandeur of it all felt too distant, too untamed for someone like me. Big things had always unsettled me. I grew up in a city where schools were pressed into the gaps between narrow buildings, their presence announced only by nameplates on small iron gates. At RISD, space is limited too—another small world, another place where I feel contained. Fourteen years of confined spaces never taught me how to stand still in a place like this, where cliffs stretched endlessly and silence hung heavier than the sky.
My silence was not indifference. It was a quiet surrender to some-thing vast and unknowable. I still took countless photos, but they felt inadequate, unable to capture what I could not quite hold. Rin was different. She was stunned at first, but soon she shifted into movement. She lifted the camera, adjusted the focus with a practiced hand, and without hesitation, captured the world in a way I could never seem to replicate. Her world seemed bright and colorful, as if she still had faith in it. Whenever it comes to photoshooting, I was usually the one with reckless ideas, perching on cliff edges, chasing the perfect angle, but she had better instincts. She always hesitated first, shaking her head at my suggestions before giving in with a resigned smile. “Not for me, thank you. But if you want to, go ahead.” After taking a few shots, she waved me over to review them. “Now copy-paste this composition for mine.” And she moved quickly yet cautiously, stepping just close enough to the edge, never further.
When Rin looked at me through the viewfinder, she always said I looked like I had just woken up. Maybe it was because I never felt the need to smile. I wondered if I should smile for the camera or for myself. If the camera were lost and a stranger picked it up and decided to scroll through its images, would they anticipate seeing a smiling face? I doubted those worries had ever bothered Rin. She engaged with the world in swift certainty, always prepared. The sky of that day was brilliantly clear, though the wind was sharp. Strands of her hair escaped from beneath her hat, catching the sunlight as she stood against the cliffs. The shadows carved deeper lines into the rock, revealing its quiet history in layers. Below, the river gleamed like a silver scar, twisting and vanishing beyond sight. While acknowledging the beauty of the view, I thought, this memory would eventually fade. I would forget how the currents flowed through the layered walls and how the light reflected off the orange rocks. Maybe that was why we took photos—to hold onto something, to push away the fear of forgetting. I tried to frame Rin against the landscape, but my photos always seemed to fall short. I called her over, an apology already forming on my face. She leaned in, scrolling through the images. “The angle is too high. The shadows are off here. This one's good, but here it looks like the cliff is cutting me in half.”
“Me sorry, me terrible at this,” I half apologized.
She shrugged. “As long as there's one good enough for Instagram, I’m fine. Haha. Let's go.”
The long hours on the road were the most exhausting part of the journey, and they weighed on Rin as our only driver. She had been awake since dawn, having caught an early flight, rushing through supermarkets for last-minute hiking supplies, and now driving for hours on unfamiliar roads. We gossipped about college life and admired the Western landscape for the first couple of hours, but then voices lowered, and now only silence remained. The erratic rhythm of the Western highways kept her tense. “You should take a nap later,” I said without thinking. The words felt hollow as soon as I said them. She did not need me to tell her. The most practical thing would have been to offer to drive, but I had neither a license nor the ability to ease her exhaustion in any real way. A quiet unease came over me. I wondered if my words were considerate or just another form of irresponsibility. The more I tried to form the right words, the more uncertain I became. It was not a matter of choosing the best response. It was the unsettling realization that sometimes, there was nothing to offer.
Maybe silence was the best reaction.
As the car moved through the vast emptiness of Utah, the last light of day sank into the cliffs, turning them soft shades of orange and violet. It was the blue hour. Beside me, Rin drove with quiet focus, her hands steady on the wheel. The silence between us was comfortable, yet something lingered beneath it. I wanted to say something, but I felt it was unnecessary. She broke the silence, “I know verbal comfort doesn't mean anything, and don’t think you actually need to do anything. You’re always so confident, like you think you can fix everything with just a sentence.”
The headlights carved a path through the dark, a futile attempt to define what was unknown. I leaned back, letting the silence resettle between us, as vast and uncertain as the landscape beyond. Some-where, the river continued its slow work, carving, reshaping, erasing. I wondered if anything would ever feel enough. Maybe it was not supposed to.
Rongzhe Li is celebrating Rin’s birthday.