Couldn’t we go over it again, just one more time, all we’ll miss when we leave for good? The classical gardens of Suzhou, the view of Jinji Lake from our apartment—especially the dawns. Ten years later, I still remember the first touch of loquat, pomelo, lychee, mangosteen on my tongue. People strutting backwards for exercise. Shanghainese in pajamas taking their pet crickets for a walk. Grandmas line dancing in streets suffused with the aromas of sesame oil, soy sauce, and chili from a hundred woks preparing the evening meal. The quickened pace of life...

over my head—
jet engines and cicadas 
screaming into phones 

Electric tricycles overloaded with cargo weaved through teeming crowds. Bureaucrats seethed. We were sent to a police department to get permission to leave, only to find that it had simply disappeared. We hawked and spat, got our docs “chopped” with stamps and seals like everybody else, stuffed banknotes into suitcases the day before our flight, smelled Osmanthus bushes fragrant in the spring and fall. Koi ponds and elegant pavilions overhung by weeping willows, jutting rockeries amid rolling hills, the Humble Administrator’s prescient design for the landscape unfurling before our eyes.

high tide 
paper lanterns set on fire 
drift wishward 

Bio: Thomas Festa