Day Four

On the fourth day I am crystal clear. I step lightly. I am an arctic god. I slur no being, crack no shells. I am vodka and ice in a quartz prism. Day four is translucent, a star-black taxi ride into daylight. Glittering talk spills from my glass. I speak in thunder-music. My friends are radiant, they converse in a silver patois known only to the Dancing Masters of Woo and their cats. A Cantonese girl group, the nightclub somewhere on the edge of town After their candied love-songs, we take them on a rickshaw weave to the Portuguese villages. Dinner by the Pearl River, a small cheap hotel. In the morning her face is as blank as a worn coin. Snail trails glitter the sheets. I am drunk again. On the fifth day, icebergs melt in the Outer Harbor, I wander the back-streets of Macao until I am robed. The ferry to Hong Kong is delayed by fog-laced dreams.