Near the city centre's First Ring Road
a bus explodes like a repressed memory:
a shoddy job, done fast & dirty many years ago;
in an alleyway, an outline knives a young Han couple.
For days the mobile phone doesn't stop
chiming with a vague yet purportedly
grim portent. & then it does, your choice of words
having hit the jackpot: you're on the grand
casino radar now; you're speechless – that is,
suddenly incapable of speech.
You cross whole campuses – empty,
streams of conversation that murmur
with the fears of well-intentioned parents.
You leave town, quickly, on the Friday late-train.
You click your tongue at a golden puppy;
without a word, it takes the rice cake from your hand.