From the light of the horizon, the term sunset is under fierce debate
between the glass of our balcony door and the electricity of the skyline.
Your eyes of fog and ink have invented them
in the most profound awareness of the moment.
Rain and air is dangerously thin and terrible outside.
I open the door, and the typhoon becomes my hair.
. . .
We sympathize with the inhaling and exhaling of my white curtains,
the shapes of clouds, and the leftover sand in the corners of pockets.
Our existence begins to disintegrate, watching the faces of our mothers grow younger and
younger in a magnificent slideshow—the richness of hue, the definition of wrinkles melt
into a blur.
The colors of the monsoon coagulate into a deep and muddy purple;
I won’t hold you, not even when you cry.
. . .
Later, I’d almost lose my sense of belonging.
You’d trade me in for a sun coin, if you hadn’t already.
One to hold in your white palm, cold as if alive. And it’d stay inside your pocket, inside your hand, where it will never get wet. We call each other by the possessive forms but neither of us will belong to each other.
You will never forgive me for writing this poem.
The tips of my fingers meet the tips of your fingers when we match our hands for size.
Time lifts in an impossible feat of physics, a few hours is already the air
holding up a Boeing 747, its beverage carts, and the 3 different languages.
On the ride back, I’d dream cartoons. I sit in a lake,
wishing for July.
. . .
When I look up, the fireworks of the sun blinds me through a million prisms of water.
When I look down from the balcony, my hair falls in before me in the direction of the rain.
Warm rain smothers like love.
Lightning strikes, naked and bold a few feet from the railing—
I fall back, pulling a muscle in my leg.
You are asleep in my bed—dreaming of explosions,
grandfather, and the Nationalist Army.
. . .
When Taiwan is submerged—
everyone gets a prize.
I’ll come back to see you
but I promise nothing.
