Life is a Char Siew Bao

Waiting for you, watching the seconds tick by, feeling like a kettle of boiling water with the sprout stopped up, finally you call and first thing I say, “40 minutes!” And frighten you. So you rush, you speed out of the lift without looking, and promptly start walking in the other direction of me, and so I have to call you to turn around, and so you start walking towards me, and then, when I see you, something melts, and I actually can smile, because you are with me now.

Walking beside you, carrying a humongous backpack with books, running clothes, shuttlecocks, and other non-essential accessories that weigh the equivalent of an elephant or a pregnant hippo, you struggling in your heels, and I walk like a drunkard in need of a prop, or a walking stick, and so we stumble along with rum-and-raisin in a cone, you sticking your tongue out to suck the melted ice cream from the sugar cone, I chipping off the cone with my teeth so you can reach the ice cream, we veer across the road with the rights of a sick man about to die, and stumble to the post office to collect an ugly gift.

Looking for a watering hole, we find cardboard and nails instead, and we hang out a bit in the humidity like teenagers with cigarettes until we cannot bear the heat and the fatigue anymore, which is all of one minute later, and so we take the trains in opposite directions, you up and me down, and I walk home, and turn on the computer to write this, and wait for tomorrow.