11:37 PM, on a plane.
An hour left to Shanghai.
My mind, thick with exhaustion.
Sleep evades me.
My neck aches,
so I write.
Yesterday, my mother and I fought.
No need to record the details.
She said, as always,
that she has carried disappointment in me for years.
We parted without resolution.
And today,
everything continues as if nothing happened.
A flight attendant just asked me how I feel about the airline service.
A small surprise.
Perhaps because of my seat’s convenience,
or perhaps for some other reason.
It doesn’t matter.
I can only seem to write stream-of-consciousness prose.
Scattered,
raw,
untamed.
I don’t want my writing to always tangle itself with love and longing.
And yet—
the moment I write the word Shanghai,
I am betrayed.
That word,
those syllables,
drag forth a grief from years ago,
a wound that still pulses beneath my skin.
It is what it is.
An inescapable part of me.
Too vast to ignore,
too deep to conceal.
The Maiden’s Dance once said—
"The carcass of a lusting she-beast, left to rot as compost on the wasteland of memory."
How apt.
And yet, the irony is,
my wasteland refuses to stay barren.
It bursts forth—over and over—
lush, feverish, unrelenting.
"Let me be pressed into your skin."
"I want to bloom with you."
"Let my lips grow into your petals."
"I breathe you in."
Daydreams of spring—
pitiful, feral, barely contained.
Still, Shanghai holds its own pull on me.
A city of contradictions—
glittering and ruthless,
its indifference disguised as charm.
It is chill, effortless, unbothered.
And yet, because of you,
I walk through its streets, restless, insatiable,
searching for something I already know I won’t find.
The goal—
to be the most at ease,
in a place that never stops moving.
"My troubles lie elsewhere—"
"A fractured soul in a fractured time."