8.15.2021

we approach the Forbidden City, looking together for the Hall of Fulfilling Original Wishes

Asleep until noon, I'm dreaming 
we’ve been granted another year. 
 
You’re here with me, healthy. 
Then, half-awake, the half-truth— 
 
This is our last day. Life’s leaking 
away again, and this time, we know it. 
 
Dear body, I hold you pleading, 
Don’t Leave! but I understand you 
 
can’t say anything. Who are we? 
Are we fictional? We don’t look 
 
like our pictures, don’t look like 
anyone I know. Daylight 
 
flickers through a bamboo grove, 
we approach the Forbidden City, 
 
looking together for the Hall 
of Fulfilling Original Wishes. 
 
Time is the treasure, you tell me, 
and the past is its hiding place.
 
I instruct our fictional children, 
The past is the treasure, time 
 
is its hiding place. If we told him 
how much we love him, how much 
 
we miss him, he could stay. 
But now you’ve taken me back 
 
to Luoyang, to the Garden of Solitary Joy, 
over a thousand years old— 
 
I wake, I hold your hand, you let me go. 
 

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