RITE OF PASSAGE

ONE

for now, I can’t go back to last year

I can’t go back to that evening of drinks

with somebody and somebody else, I miss it, June’s 

witching hour, youth wet with sweat

from Dongzhimen to Xidan, a few simple place-names 

that won’t even amount to a symbol, anguish 

yet to be broached, decadence there is no longer time for

suddenly I am soaked in rain

inkblots on the skin’s surface 

dispersing, molten, an effusion of lyric

from the South to the North, I met more strangers than ever before 

strange fingers ran over the strangest person

night lit by morning, the dark at last became

clear, at last, the closest I’ve been to the dark

TWO

some year, exactly which

I can’t say

those involved, the events and their protagonists 

it is not for me, a now

ruthless woman, to describe

the ruthless seasons

have flooded my years in the world

within the mud of a second

someone with only a second to spare 

can only be a woman

he, or is it they,

cry, or is it only a garden in the middle of a roundabout

the woman telling stories in the lamppost light is 

approximately, genuinely, not at all

me, using made-up words and phrases 

to express, to toast, to say

let’s drink, and so she drinks

I pass her a cigarette

and so she smokes, when my merciless tears

slide down like a man’s

maybe he’ll tap me on the back 

(sexy, subtle, smooth)

bitterly spitting out secrets

some simple

youthful sentiments

and those things inside ambiguity

that collide can

be named love

dramatized transformations that fall

all of a sudden, caught off guard 

unfolding, unfolding... until

they open up, bit by bit, raining down 

countless loves seen dancing in the sky 

you can’t not sing, not go with it

and if there is nothing left to say

remain silent, maybe this is the way,

like this, dancing, as though commanded

or named