The Night Market

If you wait until the sun goes down, a thousand suns will rise. Artificial, bright, igniting tangled clouds in smoggy skies, and flooding dingy streets with fluorescent streams of light that carry waves of people, cresting, crashing, clashing across mismatched sidewalks. They speak in foreign tongues that lick like wild flames and burn with glowing strangeness as cockroaches skulk and scurry beneath makeshift stands where pairs of busy hands prepare the strangest foods, from skewered squid and snakes to crepes and pineapple cakes, cubes of deep-fried tofu and the freshest dragon fruit. Watch them badger, hear them barter over onyx rings and jade bangles beside rose quartz beads that dangle from scratched display cases. The market throbs with energy, a living entity that swallows me. And when I think I've lost myself, I focus on that giddy sound, the universal language that transcends all others. They laugh, and I smile. *Based on a night market I visited in Taiwan last year